Olive Garden
Meat Manicotti
Seating: There was no parking. It was a pretty big parking lot, and I had to loop around twice before someone left. Despite that fact, the line inside was only 5 minutes long. There was a girl with a birthday cake waiting for seating and I felt kinda bad we got seated before she did. The table was for 6, and there was a Kiosk tablet in the middle of the table. Besides taunting me with 2 dollar access games, the tablet also let us pay. Which would have been nifty if the roll of receipt paper had not been falling out of the compartment. Enjoyed the tech, hated the microtransactions.
Decor: Wood walls with a low interior. Coming out of the waiting area into the seating area, there is a ramp. While I like elevation in restaurants, this was poorly done because they didn't also increase roof height. I felt tall i.e. the ceilings were very short and a bit uncomfortable to sit under. They also had cookbooks, wine bottles, and wine bottle corks arranged around. The coolest thing was the wire stand holding the corks, mainly cause cork is an interesting material to me. Also apparently people drink a LOT because there were more than a thousand corks in that stand.
Atmosphere: Inside, there's a fancy restaurant feeling, but everything you touch proves it's an imitation. This place is greasy and dirty and smelled vaguely of sweat AND was cold. It's hard to get a place cold and smelling like a locker room, since cold usually means there is no sweat being formed. What a common sense-defying combo. Also, my seating area was very dim. What is it with restaurants and dim places? Will the darkness encourage my shy taste buds out of hiding? Makes no sense.
Actual Food: Free breadsticks! and salad. Breadsticks were delicious but too few, and the salad dressing that it came with was too sour. My pasta was good, but inconvenient to slice up. The tomatoes were not enough to mix with the bland meat + pasta combo, which sucked because the tomato sauce was heavenly. My dish was 6 palm-sized tubes of pasta with some kind of meat paste inside it. I tried to cut them up into three pieces each, but the paste just squeezed out. Yuck! Difficult to eat, but at least I enjoyed the flavor.
Rating: Made me feel dirty. Would get take out maybe, but prices are expensive compared to other, better takeout Italian (pizza or pasta). 3/10
Seating: There was no parking. It was a pretty big parking lot, and I had to loop around twice before someone left. Despite that fact, the line inside was only 5 minutes long. There was a girl with a birthday cake waiting for seating and I felt kinda bad we got seated before she did. The table was for 6, and there was a Kiosk tablet in the middle of the table. Besides taunting me with 2 dollar access games, the tablet also let us pay. Which would have been nifty if the roll of receipt paper had not been falling out of the compartment. Enjoyed the tech, hated the microtransactions.
Decor: Wood walls with a low interior. Coming out of the waiting area into the seating area, there is a ramp. While I like elevation in restaurants, this was poorly done because they didn't also increase roof height. I felt tall i.e. the ceilings were very short and a bit uncomfortable to sit under. They also had cookbooks, wine bottles, and wine bottle corks arranged around. The coolest thing was the wire stand holding the corks, mainly cause cork is an interesting material to me. Also apparently people drink a LOT because there were more than a thousand corks in that stand.
Atmosphere: Inside, there's a fancy restaurant feeling, but everything you touch proves it's an imitation. This place is greasy and dirty and smelled vaguely of sweat AND was cold. It's hard to get a place cold and smelling like a locker room, since cold usually means there is no sweat being formed. What a common sense-defying combo. Also, my seating area was very dim. What is it with restaurants and dim places? Will the darkness encourage my shy taste buds out of hiding? Makes no sense.
Actual Food: Free breadsticks! and salad. Breadsticks were delicious but too few, and the salad dressing that it came with was too sour. My pasta was good, but inconvenient to slice up. The tomatoes were not enough to mix with the bland meat + pasta combo, which sucked because the tomato sauce was heavenly. My dish was 6 palm-sized tubes of pasta with some kind of meat paste inside it. I tried to cut them up into three pieces each, but the paste just squeezed out. Yuck! Difficult to eat, but at least I enjoyed the flavor.
Rating: Made me feel dirty. Would get take out maybe, but prices are expensive compared to other, better takeout Italian (pizza or pasta). 3/10
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