Dine-in Date: 27th May 2015

About Olive Garden

Olive garden originally started as a restaurant in Orlando, located in Florida, United State. The business started operation in year 1982, and gone through a lot of changes and refinement after getting years of feedback from their customers worldwide, as well as replacing their chiefs to produce meals that has better quality and give much high customer's satisfaction.

The specialties of this restaurant is Italian style. As usual, spaghetti is the main core that keep the Italian's business "Italian". Apart of that, they are proud of their risotto, chicken....and so much more that have good reviews over the internet. You can have it as breakfast as they offer soup, salad, and coffee; have it for lunch or dinner as they offer spaghetti and steak; or have it as tea time or dessert with some mouth watering cakes.

Olive garden is not really suitable for ordinary dine-in mainly because of the price, comparable to other classy restaurant like Italiannies. The first Olive Garden in Malaysia don't have excellent & high class environment as seen from the outside & inside (subjective to personal thinking, somehow) and the location is at pretty "corner" place that not many people passing by, not sure if this is considered as their strategic location but apparently, their food quality is undeniably a main factor that could attract the customers, as long as customers tasted it & love it afterwards, and affordable for the prices for any special dining purpose.

Savory experience begins...

After uncountable months of waiting for some new things to taste for in Mid Valley or The Gardens, finally our long wait is over and the Mid Valley's Olive Garden started operating in 25th May 2015, Monday. But due to work issue, I can only get to dine in at 27th May 2015, Wednesday.

Not sure if it's just me, I'm quite surprise that I don't see many people dining in this new restaurant.

Arriving at the restaurant, the staffs greet us with a warm welcome to introduce us their menu. They have some smaller menu in case you want to bring back to examine and decide what to have next time.

The staffs are extremely friendly. They bring us to our seats, give us the menu, and recommend something to us knowing that we are not familiar with the food there. They also tell us their all time offer of ordering a main meal, you get a free refill soup or salad. Repeat: FREE REFILL SOUP.

Their menu don't have too much of varieties. It's basically appetizer, spaghetti, steak, dessert, and beverage. The special thing about the beverage is they have mocktails.

Upon decided what we want to order, the waiter was waiting beside us so we could quickly make our order. Again, the way the waiter treat us is really polite when taking our order and repeat our orders with a thank you.

The first thing that arrive in our table is the soup with the bread sticks. I order Pasta e Fegioli which taste like Borsch soup, or in Cantonese we call it ABC soup, but this is has much salty taste and some pasta with other stuff inside. You are free to add more cheese into the soup if you want. I added a little, not sure if that's the thing that cause it's saltiness.

My darling order this Chicken & Gnocchi which taste like mushroom creamy soup. This one is not too creamy and taste just good. Not too thick, not too creamy or milky, taste good with some chicken and potato inside.

This bread stick is one of their signature and served to us along with the soup. The bread sticks is extremely good! The bread itself is a little hard, but the taste in the inside is really nice and you can feel the great taste in every single bite. With some cheese or salt on top of the bread, the bread is a little salty but it's really great while eating with the soup. I prefer the Chiken & Gnocchi soup with the bread.

Not long after the soup and bread sticks are served, my Cappuccino (RM8.90) has finally arrived. It's a little unexpected because I didn't encounter Cappuccino with so much cream on top. It's just taste fine, not a cup of Cappuccino that taste that great.

And finally, our main meal is served after some wait. My darling did a bit of of research so this is what she decided to order before she step into Olive Garden: Shrimp Aglio Olio (RM28.90). The overall taste is quite... spicy. The shrimp has a lot of taste from salty, spicy, herbs.... and keep going here and there for every single bite. In short the shrimp really has lots of taste. The spaghetti taste good. Nice texture, not too thick or hard, not too oily, taste just great. Just that the whole thing is quite spicy. The Chicken & Shrimp Carbonara (RM35.90) is perhaps the best meal we had this time. The chicken meat is really soft and tender, while mixing with taste of some herbs or some of their ingredient. The chicken meat pieces is not that much, but also not that little, and it's quite big. Next up, the shrimp is also really big! And it's really fresh, crunchy and well done. So it's really nice to bite and taste great mixing with other ingredients.

Dine-in Date: 3rd September 2015

Both of us got a taste of how "cheesy" their meal could be. So we are going to get something lighter hoping to get another savory pleasure again.

The appetizers in the menu has been calling for us since our first visit. Well, we decided to give this a try and we got Shrimp Fritta (RM 16.90) with butter sauce. Its portion is really small but the taste is awesome! The shrimp itself is really soft and chewy. The outer skin is lightly fried and added more biting taste for the shrimp. When mixing with the sauce, it create lovely sour and salty taste. But despite it's awesome taste, I think it's worth less than RM16.90. Seeing so many people ordering for their house salad, I'm wondering if it's because their house salad is really nice or their soups are not preferred choice of the customer. Since we tasted their soup before, we decided to get a taste of their house salad this time. We order for a main meal, so this house salad is free.

The portion is really light but you can ask for a refill if you want more. The veggie taste nice and really fresh, just lacking of varieties like any ordinary salad you could find out there. I'm not sure what type of dressing it has. I couldn't taste much of the dressing especially after we asked for some shredded cheese on the salad.

As a comparison between soup and salad.... I would say both has its own pros and cons. But I think it's mainly depend if you want to take hot or cooling stuff. For their main, I picked Smoked Mozzarella Chicken (RM 28.90) because I know their chicken dishes are really good. And honestly, I miss the Chicken & Shrimp Carbonara a lot.

The spaghetti is quite soft and chewy. As expected for a good quality spaghetti in Olive Garden. The mozzarella sauce taste good but feel slightly watery. Perhaps this is how the sauce suppose to be. But I prefer it to be less watery, maybe a little creamy, and with more taste. The chicken meat did not failed our expectation. Really soft and tender for every bite, it's not something that you can easily find out there. If you are looking for tender chicken meat, I would recommend this one.

I know I shouldn't but..... I wish to have more chicken meats on this dish....

For the dessert that we wish to taste since our first visit, we order Almond Tiramisu (RM 6.80) which is a Dolcini, literally means small cakes or dessert in Italian.

Nothing better than this little dessert after some main meals to finish your meal with sweet delights. Topped with crunchy almond bits on the top of sweet & creamy Tiramisu, the combination give a superb mixture to create great sinful taste. With its espresso-dipped biscuit on the bottom of the dessert, you can still taste the sweetness of the espresso and add great aroma into the sinful taste when you sink your teaspoon further down.

If you enjoy sweet dessert a lot, this is a must try. I think the price is quite reasonable for its portion and taste, as many other places would charge more than this price.

Contact & Location:

Monday to Sunday: 10am - 10pm

Olive Garden's Website: Click Here
Olive Garden's Facebook Page: Click Here
F-051, First Floor,
Mid Valley Megamall,
Lingkaran Syed Putra,
Kuala Lumpur, 59200

From first floor of center court, walk towards the direction where you can see Krispy Kreme or the escalator to ground floor. To reach Olive Garden, walk pass Pancake House and Watson. You will see Olive Garden as you past Watson.

Rating

Quality

Good. For a classy Italian cuisine, most of the foods are quite good and well done. Perhaps the drinks need a little improvement.

Portion

Nice. The cheese and stuff ca be quite stuffy. You might fall into the trap of cheese overload when they ask if you want extra cheese in your meal. That's up to you anyway. Other than that, their portion is quite big and quite full. You just need to be careful for the extra cheese.

Cost

Worthy. Typical Italian cuisine with great taste, and typical price like you can find out there. At least the foods taste good.

Environment

Nice. Classy type of Italian restaurant with some foreign taste. There are also some sofa if you prefer. But overall there's nothing too great about the environment.

Service

Excellent. Serving the food takes some time. But the staffs are really friendly and well mannered. You can ask for recommendation or if there is any food you are not familiar with, they will explain to you really well.

Next Visit?

Good for a classy and great Italian cuisine, just that the pricing is an issue. Can try out for their snack and dessert during the afternoon thou.