(C+)
Carrabba's is one of my favorite Italian restaurants when I'm dining at home in Austin, TX. We showed up for dinner at 6:30 on 2/12/2011. It was the week-end before Valentine's Day, so we expected it to be a bit busy. There was a 40 minute wait, which wasn't bad. That's about 10-15 minutes more than usual.
The restaurant was very crowded and loud. Within moments, it was obvious why. The restaurant had packed in several more 4-seat tables into the middle of the restaurant to accommodate the larger crowd for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately, this made the seating quite uncomfortable. We found that each patron had to be seated almost smushed against their table to avoid bumping the chair into the guest behind them, and still allowing room for the waiters to pass between tables. It wasn't exactly comfortable seating.
My dining partner and I ordered an iced tea and a glass of Blackstone merlot. The merlot was quite good; dry and fruity. For an appetizer, we ordered the fried calamari served with marinara sauce and dinner was minestrone soup with sirloin marsala and garlic mashed potatoes and a house salad with pork chop marsala and steamed broccoli.
As always, the food was perfectly prepared and seasoned well, but it quickly became clear that we were being treated as a number instead of a guest. The service was obviously very hurried in order to turn tables and have guests pushed through as quickly as possible. I felt less like a restaurant guest than an amusement park patron being pushed through a fast-food restaurant line to get everyone served.
This became quickly apparent as we were served our drinks and bread. About 5 minutes after the bread arrived, the fried calamari showed up, steaming hot and excellent as always. No less than 5 minutes after the calamari, the soup and caesar salad swooped in. My dining partner ordered the house salad, but was willing to make the exception for the caesar salad since the waiter dropped it off as a "fly by" and was not around any longer to explain the issue. About 2 minutes into consuming the caesar salad, another waiter ran by the table with the correct house salad, explaining that our waiter had run off too quickly with the wrong one, but he couldn't stop him. I was impressed that the minestrone soup was served hot this time since I have ordered it in the past and it was usually served barely lukewarm. It was a marked improvement!
No less than 5 minutes into consuming the soup and salad (remember, we'd hardly started the calamari or bread so far!) the main course arrived! Bingo! Dinner was served. We had plates all over the table, full of food that had hardly been touched so far and we had been seated less than 20 minutes!
One thing I take exception to in almost every restaurant...when the waiter served my sirloin marsala, he immediately demanded, "Go ahead and cut into that steak and let me know if that's done enough for you.". As if your customer wasn't rushed enough through the meal...demand they do something NOW for the waiter?! I understand it's to ensure they cooked it correctly and prevents the waiter from having to make more than one trip if the steak isn't right, but seriously, give the patron the opportunity to "dine" and not simply "eat". My response to the waiter was, "I'll trust that it's been done right and I will let you know if it's not. Thank you.". By far, this is probably the one thing that most customers will say that they hate to hear from a waiter.
When ordering a steak, you have to understand that restaurants will usually under-cook your steak rather than cook it to the level of doneness that you requested. If it's overcooked, they cannot "un-cook" it, so it sits cold in the kitchen until the next guest orders one like it (assuming they're able to re-serve it at all due to health code regulations), or it goes to waste, which is much more likely. If it's undercooked, then it's simply a matter of returning it to the grill for a few minutes to catch up to the level you desired.
In all, the food was excellent. My steak was ordered medium and served medium-rare as I had anticipated, and that's exactly the way I like it. The mushrooms in the marsala wine sauce were tender and tangy and the garlic mashed potatoes were served hot and garlicky. This was another improvement over prior visits to this same restaurant because the mashed potatoes are usually served much cooler. The pork chop marsala was served hot and was quite tender.
While the food was awesome and the price was acceptable (our entire meal with tip was $78), the service was mediocre since the timing was really pretty unsatisfactory for the meal. Clearly this was because they were expecting a large dining crowd for the Valentine's Day holiday, but that's not an excuse. Holiday or not, a dining experience should be exactly that, a dining experience, and not a rush to get people in and out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. This Carrabba's has done much better when it's not a holiday week-end, but for this dining experience, it was a C+. Nothing remarkable here. Move along!
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