Sarino — Restaurant in Louisville

Our second visit here and was hoping it would have improved. Underwhelmed. Chose Sarino tonight because we wanted to give it another try and because they claimed to all have had hep a vaccine with the outbreak impacting our county. Figured it would be safe. Easy parking is nice. Being able to make a reservation was nice. We were seated immediately which was nice. Waiting ten minutes in a place that was not all at busy before anyone introduced themselves as our server and offered to take a drink order? Really. Just poor service. Maybe communication issue as it was the bartender who left the bar eventually and came over to see what we would like to drink. Some time later when no server appeared, had to ask to place our food order. We had been at Sarino an hour before our food came. Made mistake of going to the restaurant hungry...made wait feel like a long time. The place was pretty slow- less than a third full. Had to ask for pepper when focaccia came. Had to ask yet again when entree came. Felt like I was imposing on the staff for most basic service. Veal parmesan was mediocre. Eggplant parmesan was all thick bread crumbs and maybe is what prison food tastes like. Could not taste any eggplant. Maybe made by chef who does not like eggplant? Not sure how a simple dish could go so wrong. The pizza going past us looked nice. They might do a better job of that? Took ten minutes after we finished for someone to clear plates, another long while till we got our check and we had to ask for it. Place was not busy and staff standing around visiting, joking, laughing. But apparently not working much. Man in wrinkled chef coat came into dining room and wondered around but didn't talk to folks. Guess he was on break? Nice surprise on check with half off wine bottle on Wednesdays. No one told about it before we ordered, surprisingly, so we asked if it was a mistake. Apparently it is there effort to get more traffic on Wednesdays. As we were nearly out the door, hostess stopped us to ask us if we were planning to take our half full bottle home. I was mortified. Mortified. She made us stand there and wait while she bagged it and stapled a receipt to the huge brown bag. Our server, the bartender, the other person who came to take our payment, the wondering chef all had a chance to proactively do this way before we were headed out the door. We try to support neighborhood spots and want folks to succeed. This group of staff is in need of training and supervision top to bottom. Not there yet. Great location. Beautiful building. Great concept. Nice surprise Wednesday special on half price wine. Has all the ingredients, but no one to start the magic. Bottom line: not yet. Would take a major change before...

I will preface this review by saying I will be coming back to see if this was just an off night.

To start, we arrived about 10 minutes prior to our reservation, however they were able to seat our party of three which was great. Our waitress brought us water and took our drink order. From there we were rather disappointed with her service for the remainder of the meal. We didn't see her for a full ten minutes after our drink order, still with no drinks. I do understand that the bar was backed up, but at least let us order some appetizers while we wait.

We did order charcuterie, tuna crudo, and focaccia. These were all great. The only "complaint" would be that the toasts that came with the charcuterie were very crumbly and didn't hold up to the meat and cheese very well. The focaccia made up for that! The tuna crudo was very good, although slightly heavy on the capers. They were easily removable if you need less.

For dinner we had three different dishes. Vodka sauce pasta, Arrabatia sauce pasta, and the Farro & Arugula salad with a side of meatballs.

The Vodka sauce was pretty good. It was slightly heavier on the tomato than most others in town but it worked very well. The pastas for both dishes were hand made and for for vodka was cooked a perfect al dente.

Unfortunately the Arrabatia pasta was very undercooked. It had a significant hard bite to it that wasn't pleasing. Good news is that the Arrabatia sauce was terrific. Spicy and meaty, with a generous portion.

The salad and meatballs were good. Meatballs were tender and moist.

Back to the service, when the food runner dropped the food off he asked if anyone wanted some fresh cracked pepper for our dishes. Two of us said yes. He let us know it would be right out. A few minutes later (3 or 4) our server came out with a plain old ground pepper shaker. The whole table literally laughed, and couldn't believe it! I had to take a picture of the shaker just for proof.

We did order dessert: Cannolis and Espresso. The Cannolis werr killer. The Espresso was Luke warm once it got to me.

Courses were timed well, about 90 minutes for the meal. The waitress was really attentive for 10 minutes then we wouldn't see here for 15 sometimes.

Overall, 3 stars, but as stated I'm hoping this was just an off night. We will come back in a few weeks to see if...

Bad service, ill prepared food, and lazy management. Our first impression of Sarino left much to be desired. Upon entering the restaurant we stood idle for ~5 minutes at the host stand. Four servers walked by without saying anything, finally one stopped and informed us the host should be out in a minute and pointed to a gentlemen standing behind the kitchen doors on his cell phone. We were seated and luckily got a fantastic server named Mike.

If you want mediocre food, this place is for you. My recommendations is to avoid the carbonara as it was soggy, bland, and had a frank amount of urine colored sauce in the bottom. We ordered two pizzas, one of which was their duck pizza. On a typical week we eat out ~ 4 times, only twice in my life have I sent food back. Tonight was one of those two times. The duck pizza had so much liquid on the top that the crust was mush, it would require a spoon to eat as it couldn’t even be picked up with a fork. Our server was rather embarrassed and apologized about the situation. He returned about 10 minutes later with another pizza that had less moisture, but was still soupy. The pizza did have good flavor, but was not appetizing to look at and certainly wasn’t easy to eat. Mike talked to the manager (Jamie Lynn) on our behalf, and told us that the manager stated we could come talk to him if there was a problem. What? I the customer need to go find the manager; he can’t be bothered with coming to our table? This is ludicrous and horrible customer service. Hopefully the owners resolve the laziness of Jamie Lynn and remedy situations like this or else Sarino has no hope for longevity.

The atmosphere, drinks, and Mike are the only thing this place has going for it. Go spend your money in a place with quality food and good...