Café Carmela — Restaurant in Lower Moreland Township

Quick Review: Their pasta is definitely made in house and that's a major plus. Service was decent and despite it being very busy we were called fairly quickly. That said, we also feel like because they were busy their service and quality suffered a bit.

Long Review-- If you're interested in reading this, buckle up:

While their pasta is made in house, my GF makes her own pasta and she is very confident it is in fact made fresh. One of the issues with homemade pasta is if you like al dente you need to cook it even less than you would dry pasta. So with that in mind while the pasta is undoubtedly fresh our pasta dish was overcooked. It wasn't absolute mush but it was mushy. Now this could just be because they were overwhelmed with the crowd and had a lot going on. It could also be because they were out of rigatoni and had to substitute it for another pasta which affected the cooking time slightly. Additionally it's possible this is just how they cook it and we should have asked for al dente as it has come to my attention in recent years that some Americans actually prefer mushy pasta (blasphemy). The flavor of the gravy/sauce was also lacking a bit as was the texture (it was watery) that said someone at an adjacent table seemed to get the same dish and their consistency looked much better. So again this could be inconsistency caused by simply how busy it was, I can't stress how busy it was.

We ordered wings, buffalo garlic parm, which I liked as did everyone else. We are not afraid of blue cheese and they definitely go crazy with it which I loved. Overall I could get the wings and pizza and probably be happy-- in fact if you exclusively want pizza and wings this might be a spot for you. We didn't try a pizza but we admit that it smelled very good.

The arancini was a bit of a disappointment. It just lacked flavor IMO and my GF just said it lacked cheese... But she says that a lot to be fair. It's not something I think we would order again here.

I thought the sandwich we ordered was absolutely delicious in fact I'd actually stop in just to grab this particular sandwich, I believe it was called "the joey".

The biggest gripe I had was that our table didn't seem wiped down, or if it was it was done very quickly. We carry hand sanitizer and our own antibacterial wipes so we just went over the table ourselves but it's definitely not something that should be the norm. Another gripe I have comes down to American tip culture but I'll explain some of that towards the end.

Overall if this review was purely on the wings and sandwiches this would easily be a 4 or 5 star review. Once you add pasta to the mix tho, especially fresh pasta, for me the standards increase especially when I know of other solid options not very far from here. That said I'm not willing to write them off just yet. As I mentioned several times it was insanely busy and I understand it's easy to become overwhelmed. I'll definitely be back to try the pizza in the coming months and I hope it's as good as it smelled. After stopping in again I'll update my review accordingly.

As for the tipping situation. I tip 20% if service was adequate I'd even call it my minimum tip. That said, I will drop to 15% IF, and only IF the service is abysmal. However if service is extraordinary tipping 30% is not unheard of. Right now in the US we are experiencing "tipflation" where recommended tips are skyrocketing out of control, I've personally seen 50% before. This is not how percentages work. Are we inevitably expected to pay 100% of the bill as a tip? While Carmela isn't that egregious I wasn't super keen on how the recommended tip was presented. 20% was, IMO set up to appear as the "cheap tip" with it being towards the bottom and 30% being seen as the expected tip. I'm ok with seeing 30% as an option but I am not ok with 20% being seen as cheap, quite simply to me 20% is fair-- the end. I've seen places include 4 tip options instead of 3 but having 20% as the minimum expected tip IMO is walking the line. Right now it's becoming a hot issue so this is...

We had been wanting to try this place for months after seeing something about their cheesesteaks on YouTube. We were running early for a show at the Keswick and decided to make the detour.

We were seated promptly in the outdoor area (it was a beautiful day) and our server, Alex, greeted us warmly and promptly. She took a drink order and left us to discuss our food choices.

The menu is not extensive, but there's some variety. As we weren't particularly hangry, we opted to split the friend mozzarella and the Don Cheech's cheesesteak. It seemed like no more than 5 minutes came by when our food magically appeared (well, dropped by Alex but it was really quick).

The mozzarella was lightly breaded with a very bright, not overly sweet, marinara (which we found out was house-made as are most items on the menu). It was not a heavy appetizer and there were four pieces so there was no awkward need to split one as many places will give you an odd number of pieces when there's a party of two.

Then we had the steak. Oh, the steak.

Shaved ribeye with onions that are well incorporated throughout the meat. Caramelized, but not too much, so you get some texture as you eat. And the Cooper sharp cheese... just adds a great counterbalance and the cheese was also well-incorporated in the sandwich. This insures that every bite has a respectable meat/onion/cheese ratio.

The roll is baked locally and is crusty, but still soft and holds together while you eat the sandwich. I don't know if they offer a seedless option, but that would be nice.

One final note... the menu prices include the sales tax.

I look forward to coming back and trying some other options on...

Full disclosure, we are already cafe Carmela fans to begin with. It’s a known fact they are one of the best cheesesteaks in the area. We are in Bucks county so going to Angelo’s can be a chore, but boy are we lucky to have such a great cheesesteak right here in Carmela’s. We had our daughter’s first birthday party recently with about 100 people including kids. We debated getting food trucks to keep the mess out of our house, but my wife reached out to cafe Carmela to see if they’d be willing to cater. They were super helpful in determining amounts and they even brought wire chafing racks to set all the food up for us outside (they delivered). The food was OUTSTANDING and people kept coming up to us to tell us so. We had a few people comment that the chicken parm was among the best they ever had. They also advised that it would be best to bring the cheesesteak meat in trays separate from the rolls. We were a bit skeptical about that, thought maybe they wouldn’t taste as good - we were so wrong. We are 3 days past the party and I’m still eating cheesesteak meat just by itself because it’s incredible. A family member who is hosting a HS grad party later this year asked us for all the details on who to talk to at cafe Carmela about food and confirmed they will be using them as well. I just can’t say enough about how easy they made it for us and how GREAT the food was. We will absolutely think of them first the next time we need an...