Cheyenne Restaurant Review: Olive Garden

On Monday, July 25, 2016, my Aunt and I went to the Olive Garden in Cheyenne.

The address of this Olive Garden is 1536 Dell Range Boulevard, its phone number is 307-632-2411, its hours are 11:00 am to 10:00 pm Sunday through Thursday, and 11:00 am to 11:00 pm Friday and Saturday. Its webpage where you can view the menu and order online is: http://www.olivegarden.com/locations/wy/cheyenne/cheyenne-frontier-mall/1716

Dell Range Boulevard runs east-west and is kind of a "main drag." On this road you can find a Walmart and Sam's Club adjacent to each other, as well as a K-Mart and a Target (all on the left side of the road if you're heading east). There are also a variety of restaurants on either side of the road, mostly chain restaurants such as Chili's, Applebees, Olive Garden of course, Red Lobster (adjacent to a Barnes & Noble), Chipotle and Qdoba, Wendy's, McDonald's (inside Walmart) and Subway. There's also a Steamboat's and a Guadalahara's.

It had probably been 4 years or more since I'd been to this Olive Garden, and I was appalled when our Greeter seated us to see that there was a little computer screen on each table.

According to the Greeter, we could play games on this machine, summon our waitress, order our food and pay for it if using a credit card.

Why was I appalled? Well, in the first place, if you can order your food right from a computer screen on your table, what do you need with a wait person? (Well - but of course the human touch. You can't ask a computer if a certain dish is good!) So eventually these little machines are going to get rid of wait staff, and all we will have will be bus persons bringing out our orders to us.

Then there's the fact that there were games to be played on it. It's bad enough that families don't really have any "face time" if I may so term it, at dinner anymore. Kids bring their electronic games and play them, ignoring any and all adults. Adults have their phones and will sit texting while waiting for their food... and now the kids can fight about who gets to play games on this little computer!

My Aunt and I didn't even try to use the thing. We wanted to deal with a real, live waitress.

I ordered the Rosemary Garlic Chicken. First my Aunt and I were served with a salad, and I ate mine accompanied by one of their delicious bread sticks. I love transferring a forkful of iceberg lettuce to my mouth and then taking a bite of a bread stick. The flavors and textures complement each other nicely.

At Olive Garden a huge bowl of salad is brought out, with individual bowl-like plates for each person, and the guests serve themselves, and can request the server to grate Parmesan over their salad if they like. You can also request their signature salad dressing on the side.

I forgot I was going to document the meal until halfway through my delicious salad!

I love carmelized mushrooms and especially carmelized onions. So when I read the description for Rosemary Garlic Chicken, which included carmelized garlic cloves, I thought I'd try it. I was disappointed with the garlic cloves...not quite what I expected.

Presentation of the Rosemary Garlic Chicken

But it was an easy matter to scrape them off and then eat the chicken and mashed potatoes, which was delicious. And served piping hot.

The ambiance was disturbed midway through our meal by the wailing of an unhappy toddler - a hazard in most restaurants. Other than that, the decor was typical Olive Garden, the tables and booths neat an clean, and it was extremely busy, perhaps because we were in the middle of Cheyenne Frontier Days.

The Greeter and wait staff were friendly, and my aunt and I enjoyed the meal.