Johnny Carino's — Restaurant in Meridian

This is a true and honest 1 star review, due to the fact that management rectified the situation, which you will hear about later. It was a chilly Monday evening and my baby sister just brought our mother to Boise, so I could take her to the airport bright and early at 3AM on Tuesday morning. We planned to make an evening out of their trip since all three of us have never been in Boise at the same time before. So needless to say we were very excited for this special dinner. Our mother is never in town so naturally we let her pick what kind of food she wanted. After hours of discussion she finally settled on Italian food. My sister and I weighed out options making a decision based on star ratings, location and traffic flow. We arrived at Johnny Carino’s at 6PM and were promptly seated in a booth per our request. The waitress was nice and brought out the free bread, oiled garlic and took our drink orders. Unfortunately, the oiled garlic had very little herbs and toasted garlic, at this point it was just oil in a saucer. We placed an appetizer order of the Spinach Artichoke Dip, along with our entrees around 6:05PM. Our mother ordered Chicken Classic Fettuccine, and my sister and I split the Shrimp Classic Fettuccine, because we were so looking forward to our Spinach Artichoke Dip, which is our favorite. It’s now 6:15PM and our entrees are being served! What madness?! The pasta was obviously carelessly scooped out of some sort of heating containment dish, that was not doing its job well at all since our dinner did not come out hot. My mother’s dish had 6 pieces of thinly sliced chicken, almost looked like lunch meat. Our split entrée came out pre-split and importunely contained only 7 pieces of shrimp, 3 of which landed on my sister’s plate, talk about unfair! The sauce was bland despite the waitress’s addition of cheese and our additions of freshly grounded pepper corns. The sauce laid on heavy and lumpy, atop limp overcooked noodles. Finally, our appetizer came out at 6:30PM, thank the heavens because we were still hungry since no one was eating their entrees. I immediately dug in.. only to find a watered down mess. It came out hot, but again so bland! It was so watery we were unable to scoop anything onto the free bread or chips. The waitress must have been embarrassed by our meal as much as we were, since she never once stopped by to fill glasses or ask us how our meal was. We got up and went to the register to get the ticket and pay, since the waitress would not look me in the eye. I let the cashier know about our experience and she went to talk to our waitress to get the bill. They comped the entire meal, which we did not even eat. Hence, the...

My husband, daughter and son in law went to celebrate my birthday and have dinner on Jan 20th - three of us are over 6 ft tall - we were seated in a booth. Relatively quickly, but it was so uncomfortable, that two of them had to hang a cheek off the booth seat in order to be comfortable, plenty of open tables. It should have been obvious that a table would have been better, we would have mentioned it, but our waiter...well. Our waiter, although friendly - was obviously new, or unsure, or some combination of the two. He brought bread, but no oil/vinegar until we asked. The oil is now pre-vinegared, whereas it used to be two separate entities. We ordered, two Italian sodas with cream. They arrived and appeared as though the cream was waved in front of the drinks, as if to show them where it could go if it were actually poured in them. Our salads arrived, Caesar around the table - they were good, and honestly the best part of the meal. My son in law ordered wings, wasn't given the option of boned or not, so apparently if the orderer doesn't tell the orderee that they want boned or boneless, the default is boned. My husband ordered the seafood rigatoni alfredo - he didn't know he needed to order it with alfredo sauce, he assumed the description would be accurate - because what he received was a lukewarm bowl of mushy sauceless noodles and some seafood. I ordered the chicken and sausage skilletini, the waiter warned me it was hot. It was not. It was a semi-warm cast iron dish, with overcooked chicken and sausage that had obviously been under a warmer in addition to having the flavor cooked out of them. My dtr ordered the baked cheese tortellini - and it was...baked. It was baked to the point of glue. The pasta was rubbery and there was no saving this meal - luckily, we got another bread drop. After the oil and vinegar had been removed from the table - so...just bread. I have been coming to Johnny's since they opened in Meridian, and have been disappointed the last several times, but this time? $104 for my birthday dinner - and we all were so disgusted that most of it was left at the table. We won't be back, we won't be recommending it and honestly I feel like they're phoning it in and just trying to get by. It's unfortunate, because it used to be our family's place to celebrate, but the last few years has been just been a...

My wife & I used to work in the restaurant industry and we love to explore new local chains or mom & pop establishments when we can.

It was our first time here yesterday. The biggest glaring issue here is there was zero personality. The host had no personality. Our server had no personality. It didn't seem like they wanted to be there and it showed. When we entered we stood there awkwardly for a bit just looking around, no acknowledgement as staff walked by. Our server hastily greeted us, rarely ever checked into our table...it felt like it was a rush to get us in and out. It wasn't busy at all either during our stay. There was a big table next to us but that was about it and they came in after we had already been there a bit. Our kids didn't feel welcomed here. The Host said they did have coloring pages (from what I understood), said they weren't up at the front, but didn't bother to go locate any. She just hung out at the host stand on her phone. We've had better service at many other chain establishments that took the time to at least pretend to care.

My wife went up to the bar at one point to get a drink and she wasn't once acknowledged by the bartender, who only had three small 2-top tables that she was cashing out. She sat there for awhile before giving up and returning to the table. No "I'll be right with you", no acknowledgement period. The food was alright, pretty standard fare. We didn't get charged for our drinks either, Diet Coke & Iced Tea, which is fine, but management can see even the little things (while again, not crazy busy at all) were being missed.

The lack of personality and care in this restaurant completely killed the vibe and our willingness to ever return. We aren't snobs, we are just a nice family that loves to support our local community when able. We were astounded by our time here and the seeming lack of care for the guests in your house. We will recommend friends and family stay away. This may be a one-off occurrence, we all have off days and that's ok! We are more than understanding. Restaurants are rough to work in, we know that very well but our first impression here was very much less than positive and we are bummed we walked away with such distaste for the dining experience at...