Carlinos Pizzeria & Restaurant

Came here for dinner a month or so — it’s now Azzurro’s Pizzeria Restaurant Bar.
The food was delicious — we started with pizza and then I ordered a shrimp dish (amazing). The service was outstanding, as everyone was friendly and welcoming. The new décor looks really nice — it’s a good mix of modern style and classic Italian. I was seated in the dining area, but their bar section looks like a nice place to grab a drink and hangout. I will definitely be going back soon.

i likes this place when it was called vita pizza, in the 80 s i got a slice to go at this place i read the businees certifcate on the wall the person is not italian who owns the business
some middle eastern name i cant pronounce, where is my piasion when i need em

I bought their Groupon for nothing, they went out of business and closed, no wonder they were giving poor service to patrons as other reviewer states, what a waste of time and money.

Just had lunch at Carlino’s. A complete disappointment! The staff had no clue what was on the menu, and looked surprised to actually see a customer. While there, two other patrons stopped in. They received the same poor service I did, and also had arguments with the staff.
I would urge all even considering Carlino’s to dine elsewhere!
I won’t be back.

When for dinner it was a total disappointment, the waitress must have been the owners daughter because she was horrible and still working there. We ordered appetizers the fresh mozzarella fried. Well it was frozen mozzarella sticks what a joke. When asked what happened she said oh it said fresh on the menu, really. Plus we ordered appetizers and not our entrée at the same time so we waited half hour she came back took the rest of the order but never put the appetizers in so when food came out it all arrived at the same time. Ugh !!! The chicken parm was hard on ends and nearly ok in center either frozen or over cooked either way if you plan on going here do yourself a favor don’t stay home and have cereal it is the safer choice. Plus the chair cushions are split, cracked and in need of care they obviously don’t care or are cash broke. Stay away !

Good italian takeout. Seating area was larger than expected and bustling. Will try again!

Worst meal ever! The meatballs by themselves were ok but very dense. Ricotta cheese, has a funny (not good) flavor. The marshals sauce is like colored water. And the garlic and oil sauce has no flavor at all. The red sauce was good. Never going back.

Oh how I wish for the old Carlino’s. The new owners are making efforts but falling short. Had dinner there and we were the only ones in the place – not a good sign. On a positive note, the dining room has been repainted beautifully and the lighting is better. The negatives? First, the waiter/​host looked like a thug in his black hoodie sweatshirt-​so lacking in any elegance. The first basket of bread contained exactly four thin slices of stale bread for the four of us. The second batch was much better and the bread was toasted and garlic knots were fresh. The food was tasty but the menu variety is nowhere near what it used to be. The room was FREEZING and we had to ask multiple times to turn the heat on. I had to ask multiple times for water glasses to be refilled. The place has potential but new restaurants have a small window of opportunity to win new customers or keep old ones. First, staff needs to dress properly and stop referring to customers as «you guys». As the only diners in the place, there was no excuse to have to ask for grated cheese, ask for water, ask for heat. Pay attention and stop acting like hash slinging gavones and more like elegant restaurant waitstaff if you hope to survive. We locals are watching and waiting. Good luck – you have potential but you are making a lot of mistakes on your execution. The food is fine but your service is amateurish.

I purchased a Groupon and my family absolutely loved the 3 course meal. You definitely taste the love prepared in our meals. Large portions and very tasty. Our waiter was very attentive and nice. I will be back with my family for dinner again.

I have eaten a many pies and pastas from Carlinos since touching down in Mineola, but this place never seemed to ignite the spark that it’s parent restaurants in the Umberto’s chain of command have done. Was a good spot for a slice, even better I could’ve frisbee’d a pizza pie from home to there… but had a seemingly unannounced change of management, many new faces and an untimely kitchen fire which has kept it’s doors shuttered for more than a month. Is Carlinos chopped?

Where do I begin?
The meatballs and spaghetti: very obvious that the meatballs were frozen (gross). The sauce was bland and appeared to be nothing more then tomato purée.
2 other meals we ordered were missing key ingredients. Not impressed. Will we go back? Ummmmm never

I ordered three pizzas for a business meeting.
Ordered them for a certain time and arrived ten minutes early,. The pizzas were all done and sitting on top of the oven.
The regular pizza was cooked to perfection and fantastic.
The Sicilian was slightly undercooked but tasted okay
The baked ziti pizza was grossly overcooked and very dry. It was disappointing, and no one wanted to take home the remaining four slices.
Not the worst place, but I doubt we will be ordering from them again.

Carlino’s recently changed hands. Beware. Ordered 3 types of pizzas — regular, Grandma and Margherita — for an informal family get together. All were disappointing. While waiting at the bar, the bartender ignored everyone but those he was friendly with and there was schmootz from the prior guests that went unwiped. Maybe they will find their sea legs but I would not recommend Carlino’s right now.

Carlino’s is a true to form family operation. Their dedication to the Southern Italian cuisine is sterling from start to finish. When I say Southern Italian, I am talking about entrees straight out of a Naples ristorante. They offer free delivery, but stop in for a better experience. Start with a generous glass of red wine, followed by pizza and oysters to share. For the main course, just close your eyes and point because no matter what your finger lands on, the entrée is sure to be out of this world. It is a family run and family first establishment that welcomes you as one of their own. Bring your friends and get there hungry because you do not want to spoil this outing with anyone other than those closest to you.

Came her for lunch after a business training session.
It’s a pizzeria AND restaurant so you can take out quickly or stay in. My coworker and I stayed. We couldn’t drink (still on company time) so I can’t speak for the quality of the drinks, but they do have a full bar.
I’m very particular about my pizza so I didn’t order it since I didn’t know how the food was going to come out. I ordered the lobster ravioli (hey my boss did tell us get WHATEVER we wanted) and it was fantastic! My only complaint was that I was so starving, I didn’t order enough… silly me since I wasn’t paying for it ;-)
It took a little while to flag the server down when we were ready to pay but she was very friendly and great otherwise so I didn’t hold it against her as they were very busy — apparently a hugely popular place.
I’ll def stop back again next time I’m in LI.

Holy variety! This place has every italian dish that you can think of! I ventured out to long island to meet up with a friend of mine since it was my turn to take the trip since she always comes to manhattan to hang out with me. She suggested the place, and i’m glad that she did. The place looks small on the outside, but it’s really spacious inside. The tables are really spread apart which I loved. I was able to have a great conversation with my friend without having to shout or worry about what the person next to me was talking about.
We shared the fried calamari. I had the grandma ala vodka pizza which just sounded authentic and it was. The pizza was obviously made with fresh ingredients and tasted delicious. My friend had the grilled chicken with broccoli rabe and hot cherry peppers. She’s on a health kick so this made for the perfect high protein low carb meal.
The staff was really friendly. The bartenders knew what they were doing and made us some great drinks. Our waiter suggested a great bottle of wine to go with our meal as well.
I don’t go to long island often, but would definitely recommend this place to anyone in the area.

Well, after my family’s experience tonight with Carlinos, we won’t be spending money there any longer.
First off, I should say that my family and I have eaten in the restaurant many times and always had a good time. The wait staff is very friendly and this negative review is no reflection on them.
We’ve done take-​out from Carlinos several times, all occasions have been worse than the previous time. Just as everyone else has said on here, their pizza is atrocious… I mean bad… really bad. Go to Frantoni’s or Gino’s in Williston Park for good pizza, not here. Okay, but they still have decent food, right? Well, I tried the lasagna there too and it was putrid. In fact, it might have been the worst lasagna I have ever tasted. First of all, the portion is very small for lasagna. The top of the lasagna had a goop of cheese on it (barely cooked) and any good lasagna does not require that. The sauce used was overly sweet and not at all tasty. There was also this awful aftertaste from the meat used in it that just made it disgusting. Just awful. But hey, we tried them one last time tonight and our reward was the worst experience out of all of them!
We decided to order in from Carlinos despite our bad take-​out experiences. We thought, the in-​restaurant experience has always been pleasant, so why not try again? In the past, we ordered the lobster ravioli while at the restaurant and always enjoyed it. The price was right ($ 14) and the portion seemed fairly generous. However, after picking it up tonight and bringing it home, we opened the container to find 5 measly raviolis! That’s it… just 5. This was far less then the portion we were used to in the restaurant and barely looked like an appetizer portion.
Now I was willing to just chalking this up to Carlino’s being awful and forgetting about them. However, my mother was furious and wanted to call to complain about this and ask them if they happened to serve more in the restaurant compared to take-​out. My mother was treated terribly upon calling Carlino’s. The woman who answered the phone was immediately rude and hostile and essentially told her that this was the portions they gave and tough if you don’t like it. When my mother asked for the owner, the woman put the phone down to tell him about the rude person on the phone (she clearly didn’t master the art of covering the receiver for one… for two, my mother wasn’t rude). She got back on to say the owner was too busy to come to the phone and then complained that my mother was being rude.
Now my mother was really aggravated, so she pressed farther and the owner finally got on the phone. If you think this is the part where the owner alleviates the problem, you’re wrong… he was even ruder! In his obnoxious tone, he said how he pays $ 60 for lobster ravioli (so it’s not even made there) and that he keeps portions to 5 as a result. When my mother told him that in the restaurant, we had gotten at least twice as much, he essentially called her a liar and insisted she must be mistaken (she wasn’t, I’ve ordered it twice there). So at Carlinos, you get 5 raviolis for lobster (or seafood) and a whopping 6 ravioli if you just want cheese. Basically, don’t go here if you enjoy ravioli! I should point out that these are average size as well… not overly large by any means.
Again, my mother wasn’t even asking for anything when she called, she was just venting our disappointment with the order. She even mentioned that we had been there many times, but the owner didn’t seem to care that he was losing a customer. He wasn’t the least bit courteous and all he did was argue (so much for «the customer is always right»). All my mother wanted was an acknowledgement of our disappointment, but was instead met with rudeness.
All the owner needed to do was say something like «Hey, my name is XX… I’m really sorry you had a bad experience. Next time you come in, ask for me and I’ll get you a glass of wine»… seriously anything remotely like that would have been fine. But no… he was just argumentative, obnoxious and rude… he didn’t even bother to give his name. He treated my mother like an annoyance, not like a customer.
When my mother explained to him (the owner) that she was going to post a negative review on Unilocal based on our experience, he acted as if he didn’t care… Well pal, he’s the review. I hope some of the people reading this care and I hope it keeps people away from your awful attitude and restaurant. Maybe you’ll even try to spin this in a reply (as you seem to do when people call you on your bad pizza)… but the facts are the facts.
With so many better choices in this particular area, there is no reason to award bad service. Go elsewhere.

I love Carlino’s Restaurant of Mineola. Carlino’s is a nice neighborhood restaurant with remarkable food at reasonable prices. Never had a meal that I didn’t enjoy. Definitely give it a try if your in the mood for some great Italian food.

I ate there 3 weeks ago with some friends. I had the pasta fagioli which it was delicious and for dinner i had the steak with the melted Gorgonzola. Steak was nice and tender (ny strip) and the Merlot i had worked nicely with this meat. waiter was cool:)

Ristorante.
Looks pretty small from the outside but when you go in there is a lot going on — full bar in the rear, one semi-​private room for dinner or a party and one open room up front near the pizza counter. All the rooms looked very nice — you wouldn’t feel uncomfortable brining a date there.
Full menu with just about anything you could want in the way of Italian. smallish selection of pizza by the slice considering that most places typically have like 10 or more types on display, Carlino only shows a few– although you can ask for anything.
Pizza was fine if a little expensive (I thought so anyway) and the service was fast and friendly.
Parking in front on street or muni-​lot behind. A few cost free spots are right by the back door if you are going to run in to get something to go.