Olive Garden

Sarasota, Florida, United States

The Olive Garden is a chain of restaurants offering Italian style food in several locations around the US (read a review of Olive Garden near Chicago). It is a great family restaurant. Entrees come with unlimited salad and garlic bread sticks.

Cost

Entrees are around $15.

Dress

Most people were dressed quite casual, although some were wearing slightly nicer shirts. Jeans and a t-shirt are common.

Service

Restaurants in Sarasota at this time of the year seem to be very busy, even later in the evening. We waited about 45 minutes before getting a table. Once we were seated the waitress was very accommodating and tried to get the food to us as quickly as possible.

Parking

This location is located in a plaza with plenty of parking around the restaurant.

Items Ordered

Garden-Fresh Salad and Bread Sticks

Garden Fresh Salad

The bread sticks are served warm and brushed with garlic butter. Otherwise, they are just a plain white bread. The garden fresh salad is very good. It is mostly lettuce but has an excellent dressing.

Tuscan Garlic Chicken

Tuscan Garlic Chicken

This was a delicious creamy dish. It appeared to be new, and was heavily advertised on the menu. It looked delicious, so we had to try it. (I heard many other people also ordering it).

The pan-seared chicken was very good and there were a fair amount of peppers and spinach in the dish. There were many whole roasted garlic cloves - probably an entire bulb's worth. The roasted garlic, and even the garlic sauce was quite garlicky - beware of garlic breath afterwards!