Not so Happy birthday!
A friend asked me where I wanted to go for my birthday and I said the Olive Garden. We hadn't been there for a while. This last visit was a BIG miss. It started with my appetizer. Someone had dumped a lot of garlic in the stuffed mushrooms, so much so that you couldn't even taste the stuffing. The calamari was rubbery and the batter slipped right off the strips. My white wine cream sauce was greasy with puddles of butter separating from the rest of the sauce. Isn't cream sauce culinary school 101? The shrimp was under cooked and slimy for my taste. The plate was drowned by sauce, looking nothing like the menu picture. It was inedible. To their credit they took the dish back and asked me what I wanted instead. I really would have rather quit while I was behind and my stomach queezy. I ordered the ravioli and it came with the very minimum of marinara and melted Italian cheeses. It was dry, rubbery [as if microwaved] and largely tasteless. Overall this last experience was miserable. I ran into someone outside the restaurant who asked me about the food. I said you will get a much more edible meal at "99" just down the road. At least I saved them.

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