Johnny Carino's — Restaurant in Albany

I've been to Johnny Carino's multiple times. It has never been my favorite but it is the only Italian place in town that I know of that isn't a pizza place. And I do love their bread and oil. Today was the straw that broke the camel's back.

We were seated in a room with an extremely noisy party. We had to shout to hear anything. I understand that happens but they should have seated us somewhere else when they couldn't hear our orders. Our orders were taken at a decent time but our meal took forever, over an hour. But for some strange reason they brought my wife's food out 30 minutes before anyone else. Good thing she ordered salad and didn't have to worry about it getting cold while she waited for the rest of us to get our food. But 3 of us ordered salad. Where were the other 2 salads? Then when the food finally came my dad got his side salad but not his sandwich. The side salad should have been the thing that came out before everything else. I ordered the pecan encrusted salad. It is supposed to have a warm bacon vinegrette but there was no dressing at all. My mom ordered the same thing and it also had no dressing. So we had to wait for a server to come back so we could ask for dressing. But really what we had to do was flag down the hostess to get it because we didn't see our server for most of that hour we waited. The server didn't apologize for the wait or the noise.

I'm not sure if my pecan encrusted chicken was supposed to be cold but it was. In fact I waved down the hostess to ask if it was supposed to be cold. She didn't know but said she would ask. But we never saw her again. And after waiting so long I just imagined it sitting somewhere getting cold. So when we finally did see the server again I returned the salad. To her credit she did ask if I wanted something else but no way was I going to ordered something else. So I didn't even get dinner.

I waited while the rest of the family ate. Then we had to flag down the hostess again to ask for our check. The server did remove my salad from the bill. But no apology or anything.

I've worked in restaurants before. This is a situation I would have asked my manager if I could give a discount or a free dessert or even ask the manager to come out and talk to us. But nothing was done.

Next time I want Italian food...

5 stars all around. This restaurant is beautiful inside and out, and they have the staff to match. Everyone was so friendly and helpful and made our food not only delicious, but efficiently. Placed an order for pickup and it was so good we had to go back a second time to get another order of the chicken parmesan for my boyfriend because let me tell you - this is by far the best chicken parmesan I have had in a while. The chicken is perfectly crisp and the sauce had tremendous flavor. I ordered the minestrone soup on the side and that also had great depth of flavor. My taste buds are doing a dance right now just thinking about this food. The baguette they served on the side was so fresh and soft too, with the outside of the bread being the perfect amount of crisp! Tasted amazing with the oil and herbs. The only thing that maybe wasn't a full 5 stars was the chicken Alfredo, which is why we went back and got another chicken Parm. My boyfriend said that he wished the Alfredo sauce was more thick/cheesy. He also said that the chicken could have had some more flavor to it too. But again, that chicken parmesan was amazing, so it definitely made up for the Alfredo and then some :)

The desserts?? Oh man, the desserts were SO good. As I was paying for the food, the hostess told us that she was excited for us to try the apple skillettini because it was her absolute favorite thing on the menu and we definitely found out why. The puff pastry was nicely crisp and the apples were soft and juicy. The caramel on top as well as the caramel on the ice cream was a nice touch as well. I'm also a huge fan of cannolis too, and these ones were picture perfect, but they tasted even better than they looked. The shells on these cannolis were so crispy fresh and the filling was perfectly smooth. No one likes a soggy/stale cannoli shell!

Man if I could give this place 100 stars, I would. The only thing that could have possibly made this better way eating in rather than ordering everything to takeout, because the ambiance inside was so chill. Definitely would eat here again and...

So me and my boyfriend went in today and were very dissapointed. I walked in with running shorts and a girly jersey because i had just left the ymca so i was getting judgmental looks from the start. We were sat at the booths at the bar and our waiter came to take our order his name is briley. He came to take our order nd drinks. A few minutes later a couple came in after us and their order came out before ours. Our food arrived 10 minutes after the couple behind us. Mind u we had arrived and ordered before them. After receiving our food (which i had been craving for over a week) was a complete and utter disppointment. The food had no flavor and was completelyy bland. We told our waiter and not only did he seem annoyed but was frustrated with me for complaining. I still said sorry and yet he still turned away ignored me, and continued to get the manager. The manager came to our table apologized and offered a free desert but after dealing with such a rude waiter we wanted nothing but to leave. To make matters worse, upon receiving our bill he thought he'd get away with charging us an extra 5 dollar drink as a tip. My boyfriend showed him in the menu where it had said unlimited refills. Again frustratedd he went to change it took 5 min in doing so and did not have the decency to give back our change. Yet again had the manager bring it to us. We weren't worried about the change but more so that they had tried to steal from us thinking we wouldn't notice. After that customer service he didnt deserve any tip for that matter. Instead of taking care of us he was to busy make alcoholic drinks for his co workers and regardless if they were clocked out they can't be served drinks at their job and he would know that since he's a bartender as well in order to even have a serving license. I've been a waiter for over 4 years and this has been the worst experience I have ever had. I will not be returning at all. Not to mention the workers could'nt wait for us to leave before talking about us. So...