Carbone’s Restaurant

Avoid the prime rib. Very disappointing. Over cooked and swimming in salty gravy like substance.

It’s time to close up shop and move to a smaller building. This place is seriously depressing. It was a huge empty space with a handful of diners on a Saturday night at 7:45pm. Not to mention the horrible 1970s décor. The food was mediocre at best. The salad they serve is a watery iceberg mess and the french fries are those frozen double breaded ones. I asked for my pasta to be cooked al dente and it came out as mushy as I would have expected it to be had I said nothing. They advertise homemade pasta, but it’s so obviously not. The meatball could have come from Costco. The sauce is pretty good, but it’s not delicious. I doubt this place will be able to hang on much longer, as long as they continue to refuse to evolve with the changing times. I mean, they are already 30 years past their prime.

Wowzers — talk about disappointing service and lackluster eats to top it off. One would think when you book a substantial catering order with a per person price of $ 25-​$ 30 at a fairly affordable eatery that you wouldn’t have to keep wondering and asking «where is the food for our group?» an hour into the party. And, when the food comes, you were wishing they would just take it back because your little cousins could make a better pasta dish than this one.
Other reasons I’m not throwing stars up in the sky over this business:
–watery salad — yes, watery. They must do an extra rinse to their bagged lettuce because it was darned near swimming
–décor — zero windows — it’s like stepping back into the ‘80s
–lack of gumption you look for in a business when throwing them a $ 1,000+
–I’m pretty certain our catered meal was missing the side vegetables (we received chicken, pasta and a small salad as the meal)

I came to Carbone’s for an event that was being hosted here and having dinner catered through the restaurant, so this might be from a different perspective than some of the other reviews who just came for dinner in their dining room, but I won’t be back here after my experience.
The building is kind of weird when you pull up to it. It’s a large single story brick and concrete building that looks like it is either a prison or a strip club. It has not a single window anywhere but the entrance, and is just 4 solid walls with some odd colored lights. They do have a large parking lot that was empty at 5:00 on a Saturday night. Inside it is nice, and it is a big space. They keep it on the dark side as far as lighting goes, and there is a lot of wood. It looks like they have a pretty large dining area, and there is also a room with a nice big wooden 4 sided bar. The space that they have available to host parties can fit a large number of people, and they have the ability to split it up with some retractable walls that can be opened and closed so they can host numerous parties at the same time.
Our space was setup nicely, and they had water, soda, beer, and iced tea out in pitchers for people to drink when they were arriving. They had round tables set up to seat 7 people each, with a nice little arrangement in the middle. The table had a nice cloth tablecloth on it, which they for some reason covered up with a cheap disposable paper cover. We were a table short, and it took a really long time (25ish minutes) to get them to completely set up one extra after asking. While people filed in, someone asked if we could get some music over the speakers so the room wasn’t so quiet, but they said it was as loud as they could make it since the one sound system does the entire restaurant and if they turn it up then other areas will be too loud. We couldn’t hear it even if everyone got quiet and listened for it, so don’t come here wanting any type of ambiance from music.
They brought out pizza for an appetizer, and I thought it was pretty good. It was a thinner but crispy crust with a good amount of cheese and toppings. I would get a pizza from this place. The issue is that they reserved the middle table in the room for the pizza, so all of the rest of the tables were spread out in a circle around the mostly empty center serving table instead of having it up against one wall like the rest of the food and drinks. Salad and bread came out next. The salads were served to each person individually which meant it took a long time for everyone to get theirs. It was not good either. The salad was swimming in dressing, and they had been prepared ahead of time so the pieces in the bottom were soggy from the pool of dressing it was in. The actual dinner was a penne pasta dish and some fried chicken. The pasta was not good. It was spongy and looked like it should be a $ 5 lunch option from Fazoli’s. The fried chicken was soggy and very very greasy, without much of any seasonings. It was a pretty poor dinner, made worse by the fact that they ran out of chicken and some guests had to wait 15 minutes for them to fry up what looked like some chicken patties normally used for sandwiches.
The servers were nice, but they needed at minimum one extra server to take care of that many people because everything was slow. After dinner, we were going to eat some cake that we had brought in that they said they were going to cut up for us. About 30 minute after we all finished dinner and when people were starting to leave, the cake finally showed up. I don’t know if that was them being slow or whoever was in charge of our party asking for it at a bad time, but it didn’t work out well. They had also already been around to the tables to clean up everyone’s plates and silverware, and then questioned why nobody had forks when asked to bring out extras. It’s because you picked them all up.
With just the 4 pizzas, the 2 main dishes with zero sides other than bread and a small salad, and some pitchers of beer bought a la carte, it was $ 25 a person, which is insane for what we got. For the food, service, and space, I wouldn’t have paid more than $ 18 a person, which would still be on the high side. To top it off, there was an event going on next to ours that seemed like a more professional gathering, and they had someone come over to ask us to be quieter during out 40 person dinner party for a celebration, at which the noise level was certainly not loud to start with. If you need a quiet space, rent the whole room since the soft retractable walls don’t seem to do much.
Overall, the whole experience from the service to the food was all seriously underwhelming. Their dining room was sparsely populated by a handful of much older patrons, so maybe that have a niche in that, but I wouldn’t recommend it for any sort of hosted event. That same opinion was shared by the majority of the rest of our group as well.

This is really good! Their staff is exceptionally friendly and ready to serve. The food is excellent and budget friendly. Nice atmosphere and clean. I love it!

I have been coming to Carbone’s since the 1970’s. The food is wonderful, authentic Italian. We especially love the pastas; the ravioli, the gnocchi, and the spaghetti are all fresh and homemade. The tomato sauce and the meat sauce are amazing. The Shrimp Scampi and the Beef Bracciole are very good if you want something other than pasta. The service can’t be beat and everyone is very friendly. I hope to enjoy eating here for many more years!

Great food especially love the pizza and salads.

My husband and I visited Carbone’s with my parents in celebration of my mother’s birthday.
It was a Friday at 7pm and we had reservations. When we arrived, we were seated at a table in the back. A friendly waitress greeted us and took our drink order while we were waiting for my husband to arrive.
Our drinks arrived in a quick few minutes. The waitress promised us bread. This was the last time something would go right with the meal. Hubby arrived and we all chatted while he was waiting for the waitress to take our drink order.
One of the things we talked about was the décor — which looked like it was in a 1970’s time warp. We also noticed a large group of people being seated in the sectioned off area behind us. I hesitate to call it a room, as there was nothing to keep out the noise. It was a wedding rehearsal dinner chock full of giggling bridesmaids and screaming children.
Hubby then placed his drink order and we reminded the waitress that she promised us bread. A few minutes later, she was back with his drink and took our dinner order. Still no bread.
We waited.
And waited.
A different person brought us some bread. We noticed people seated near us, that all arrived after us, were finishing up their salads. The bridal party was starting to eat their salads.
More waiting. I get it. The bridal party is probably a priority, but we were completely ignored. A manager came over because at this point it was clear we were forgotten about. She apologized, took a second drink order, then promised to bring us salads.
A full 45 minutes after our order, our salads came out. They were just ok. I ordered the creamy blue cheese dressing and it was definitely something that had been bottled, not made from scratch. Our actual dinners arrived shortly after that. My cheese ravioli was bland, but at that point, I was starving. My husband stated his chicken parm was good, and my father’s was acceptable.
My poor mom. She took a bite of her lasagna and it was cold. Not lukewarm. Cold. The waitress, now aware we were a little annoyed, took it from her. She later brought back the same plate of food. If I wanted poor mom to have microwaved lasagna for her birthday, I’d have bought her Stouffer’s. She ate a bit more.
The manager said they’d take her meal off and offered to bring her cake. She didn’t want any and settled for some likely stale biscotti in a complementary mug.
Finally, time to leave, get me the crap outta here! We go up front to pay (because it’s such a classy place), and the cashier is refusing the gift certificate I had brought to help toward the meal. She argued with us and said, «We don’t take these any more.» There was no expiration date on it, and we had only had the certificate for a few months. After what seemed like an eternity, the manager finally smoothed it over.
My mother told me the following day, she was sick later in the evening. Lasagna, anyone? Next time we’ll go to Rizzo’s!!!