Carrabba's Italian Grill — Restaurant in Maryland

Good lord that will be the final time. Last time we went we said that, so this time was our fault, but its worth telling you all about our experience. Also know we are not fine diners... so our expectations are very reasonable. For the last 2 years this location has been suffering, each time we go it gets worse, sadly they serve my other halfs favorite dish, which is why we return. I am not sure if it's a staffing problem or just poor management. So to start, when you come in and are sorta greeted, you stand in front of an area with a menu shelve that is literally rotting wood falling off the wall... napkins and trash on the floor. Also the very first booth at front is being used as some sort of staging area / break area for employees to store their coats, drinks, half eaten food, and rolled napkins for the customers. Very unsanitary!!! It's literally the first thing you see as you are sitting down to have a "nice" dinner. So it was about 5pm and the place was empty, but literally filled to the brim with employees and for some reason they walked us all the way to back after making us wait for her to go wipe off our table, and gave our party of 4 a cramped booth table. Being all the way in the back it was a great place for us to watch the employees use their party room to eat and hang out in. . . And also to look at all the perfectly clean and empty tables we could have been offered...gah!!! So the place is in pretty bad disrepair. The fixtures are dusty, the wood on the booths is dirty and failing, alot of the lighting is out, or blinking on an off and bathroom was smelly and gross. When I walked to the bathroom, I looked into the kitchen and it looked like a bomb had went off, sauce and salad on the floor, we should have left at the point. So after a long wait we finally got a waitress, and she seemed like she had just gone through something, so I was ready to give her tons of grace. She was all over the place and told us she was so stressed with customers, but for what reason? The place was empty! And why tell us that! She took forever to get back out to us after bringing us water. I told her we were there for my other halfs Birthday, and she said nothing, no Happy Birthday, or here are our specials, nothing. She finally got our orders after getting so confused about how to do it. After a long wait we finally got our food, but mine was sadly wrong, and long story short, my family finished their food and my order finally came out, however it was still wrong. Geeez... Oh and no apology, she just blamed the kitchen and acted stressed out. She was so odd. Service work sucks, but this was beyond that being the excuse. I would like to tell you it got better , but no, the food was luke warm, not hot. And I had to finally ask her for refills right at the end. Then came the check circus! She could not figure out how to run the machine. So after almost 25 minutes and asking 3 times for the check. She finally had to bring a machine to us. And then it would not print a receipt. We waited another 20 min and finally I got fed up. A Birthday dinner ruined. I don't even know why we tipped her. I will say the guy who brought us the bread, was awesome, like fine dining awesome. He was welcoming, he told us all about the herbs in the oil for the bread and even said I hope you enjoy your meal with us this evening. I could tell he used to work somewhere nice. I wish the tip we left, went to him. So after we gave up, I found a manager and let her know the situation, she sorta apologized and told us this is not her regular location..I guess she knew she had to shift blame.. She made no offer of fixing the situation a discount just a half hearted apology. The whole place had more employees in it than customers and two servers, and the one we got was "stressed out"! What a waste of good money. Oh and the place was freezing inside. That will be our LAST TIME there! I guess it's back to the Olive...

Where to begin. Came in this evening for the 1st time. Was greeted & sat in the 1st booth. Directly after being sat, the hostess sat in the large booth to our left. 20 minutes later, still wasn't greeted by a server...no drinks...nothing. I asked the hostess what was going on, she had to tell the server that had 2 whole tables right next to us to take us & he replies "I didn't see them" even though he clearly made eye contact several times. Finally came to apologize and take our drink order...came back with water....left then came with bread and left...still hadn't brought our drinks we ordered. Took our app order, one of which they were out of. He left again. When he came back my son asked for his tea. I never received my coke. We then ordered. My side salad came, sons never to be seen. App came, the server acted surprised asking "did you get yours" my son said no...he left yet again. Mind you he never delivered anything. He returned with the salad and my son asked again for his tea, he went and returned with a watered down tea. The trio app was sad looking as well. Moving along to yet a different person delivering the food, I asked for broccoli in my dish it came soggy and on the side and my sons chicken trio looked like chicken tenders, when he cut into the very end to taste then he cut through the middle realizing sonething wasnt quite right & discovered it was still raw! That was the straw, I called the hostess and replayed our entire visit thus far and showed the chicken and asked for a manager...the manager came and said she heard we were unhappy with the food so I explained everything. She offered to remake us anything and said she saw it and it may have just been the prosciutto. I said no clearly raw & I kindly declined because the raw chicken killed both our appetites. I asked to have the food removed from the table & to charge us what we ate, she told us we were good and apologized again & didn't charge us for this sad excuse of a dinner experience. Not to mention the prices were a big elevated for some pasta, thats not the issue...the issue was piss pour service & quality of food that could seriously make someone ill. Fast forward to now, he's throwing up and stuck on the toilet. Lucky for me I have pictures etc. This is sad and very uncalled for. Let's just hope it gets out of his system. I would say not only retrain servers, but your cooks as well before they poison...

The food here is mediocre. The olive oil they bring for your bread does not taste normal. It left a very strange taste in the back of both our mouths. We think it is adulterated with vegetable oil. The unforgivable offense they committed to the food was using a lot of cheap hydrogenated, non-dairy substitutes in their tiramisu. I love tiramisu. Theirs was really awful. The supposed lady finger layers were dry and not soaked in espresso or liqueur at all so there was no flavor to the tiramisu. Only one corner of the bottom of the tiramisu had any espresso liquid. But there was none in the top layer of cake or in the majority of the bottom layer. The cream layers were stiff and badly flavored because they used something like a cool whip or crisco in place of dairy cream and mascarpone. I can picture how some food "scientist" was hired by this chain to figure out what cheap ingredients they could substitute for authentic ingredients and get away with it. They probably found that the majority of people couldn't tell the difference so why not substitute cheap and nasty stuff. If you are one of the people who can't taste very well, you still shouln't eat this because it is bad for your arteries and you are getting ripped off. For $8 for that pathetic little square, you should be getting high quality tiramisu not this garbage. You can get a really tasty tiramisu the same size with quality ingredients for $5 at Whole Foods on the weekends, for example. By the way, when we got home from eating there, my boyfriend got a stomach ache and the rest that comes with that, which you'd probably rather not hear the details of. I didn't have any of his chicken so it was probably that. I only ate two bites of the tiramisu. One bite told me it tasted bad. The second bite I used to analyze the ingredients. I caught the waitress and told her, "This is disgusting." She just looked at me. I then said, "I am not going to eat this." Then she took it away and it was taken off of our bill. Nobody asked what was wrong with it. Do they already know how disgusting their tiramisu is so they don't need to ask? There was no chance in hell that I was going to pay them $8 for a pile of crisco and a bit of dry,...