Carino's Italian-lubbock

I am always amazed when you go out to lunch and encounter a half empty restaurant with a 30 minute wait. Sure, I get that staffing dictates the number of people that can be seated and served, but a wait like that begs to have management serving and seating patrons as well as taking their orders. These are people asking to spend money in your establishment. Allow them to. With that out of the way, our recent experience left much to be desired. Once we were seated we were able to order in a timely fashion. I ordered the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. This was a decent choice except for the fact that the unlimited part was limited by the fact that we were only checked on every 15-20 minutes. We did not have 90 minutes to spend on lunch. Disappointing. The food, once it did come, was good.

Ugh this is a difficult review to write because I wanted the experience to be so much better. Never mind the fact that it was the dinner choice on a much-needed date night with the wife and was decidedly underwhelming, but I suppose much of my previous positive reservations about this place were locked away behind layers of nostalgia because I just remember it being so much...better. The bread they served us before the meal and the dough of my pizza were pretty excellent but everything else adorning the dough of said pizza tasted cheap and lackluster. My wife said her lasagna at Fazoli’s was better than what she experienced here. The salad was decent but the cleanliness of the place could have been better. I didn’t care for the fact that they were using the table directly behind us to stack dirty dishes on. No one had bussed it in the hour we were sitting there, waiters just kept stacking used dishes, cups and cutlery on it. Not exactly deplorable but not exactly what we are want to experience at a place like this either. Our server was pretty good as were the adult beverages he made for us but other than that, meh. You never want to leave a place like this thinking, “Should have gone to (insert name of literally any other Italian eatery here...).” Wanted this to be so much better.

Pros: Seated fast Welcoming staff Appearance of food Bread & oil was good Great waitress Cons: Took long time for bartender to pour a glass of wine for waitress Dirty on wall beside table I was sitting in...bread and dust * The food was good, however if you like thick spaghetti sauce, this is not the place for you.*

Shame on me, but I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of the food!! I can assure you that the shrimp scampi was wonderful!! My favorite thing is the bread and garlic/oil dip. I tried an Almafi strawberry lemonade made with Captain Morgan rum.....that will be a repeat on our next trip! We had great service by really friendly staff.

Possibly the worst service. Just to get our salad took well over 30 minutes. We didn't get cutlery at our table. One of the cooks had to bring it. The restaurant felt like the whole building was in Alaska. We asked twice to turn up the heat and they said 'we'll see what we can do.' It felt like Carlos was the only server in the building. We saw him running food, making drinks behind the bar, tending other tables. He did get us a discount because of the wait time, but there was no more than 30 people in the building so i didn't understand the wait. I fear for the longevity of this building.

Took the family here last weekend. Got seated quickly. Had a great server and service was on point. Things turned bad when part of a rubber glove from the kitchen area ended up in the dough of my son’s pizza. We all lost our appetite and had just started eating. I brought the situation to our server’s attention and she takes the piece of glove and starts yelling at the kitchen staff who are all standing in the bar area. Kitchen manager came over and offered to come the pizza. I explain to him that we all barely touched our food and we’re ready to leave. He offered to give us a $10 gift card for our next visit which I gave back to him because we will never go to another Carino’s. The service manager eventually came over and offered to come the meal if we paid for the appetizer and teas that we drank. Honestly I was just ready to get out of the place. By this time the other tables around us that were eating had stopped eating and were leaving as well. This was the absolute worse experience I’ve ever had at any restaurant. Everyone from managers to kitchen staff need to be trained in proper food service.

We used to love this place but have not been back in a few years. I did like the new updated menu and it still had many of our old favorites. When we walked in the restaurant was half empty on a Wednesday evening at around 730 pm, my initial thought was uh oh... When I asked for a table for eight, (4 kids, 4 adults) the hostesses looked at each other with a "oh no" face, right in front of me. Double uh-oh... Seated at 7:35 ( I remember because my kids asked, they don't get tea after 8) we ordered pretty quickly and got our food at 8:49 - many apologies along the way - especially when a business associate and his family at a nearby table ordered, ate, and left before we got our food. The waiter was good and did his best, but it was just frustrating to wait that long. Also, we didn't get to order dessert as the bills came before we were asked, I did intend on getting tiramisu, but it's probably best that I didn't since I filled up on bread and salad and then a meal an hour later! After all that, the manager did comp a single kids entree, but never visited our table - we didn't complain at all, but it would have made a big difference. Probably won't be returning any time soon.