ITALIAN GARDEN

Italian Garden, 2716 Wade Hampton Blvd.
Greenville, SC

We were really hoping to like this restaurant, since it would be close to our house and whenever we were in the mood for Italian Food it would be mighty convenient. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver on either food or service.

 

This was a Mexican restaurant previously and I forget what it was before that, but the new owners have really done a great job on renovating the inside as can be seen above. 

We went at lunch and ordered two of the lunch specials - meatball sub which came with fries and spaghetti with meat sauce which came with a salad.

Both selections were just ok, not bad, but definitely nothing above average (to us, they both had the look and taste of food bought from Sysco, rather than being made in-house). The meatballs were sliced to make it appear there was more meat in the sandwich, but it was still only half full of meat (you can get a pretty good idea from the photo of how much it was lacking). The meat in the spaghetti sauce was almost non-existent, you had to really search hard to find any of the tiny morsels of meat. Add in the fact that the salad dressing appeared to be watered down and the sweet tea really should have been called "barely sweet tea" and  I came away with the idea the restaurant was trying to cut as many corners as possible to make a profit. Personally, I would rather pay a little more and get a couple of decent meals. Our server was under-trained and almost comically bad. Once she brought our order, she disappeared until we were almost finished eating, then she returned again within a few minutes, and then once again a few minutes later to ask us if we wanted.....there was a long pause....because she couldn't remember the word "bill" or "check". Maybe things are different at evening service, but we'll never know because this lunch was such a disappointment, we won't be returning.