Mariolino's Italian Cuisine — Restaurant in Murphy

I was really hoping for at least a decent Italian restaurant that we would be able to go to. I’m an Italian from NYC. I grew up on simple , yet great food. I figured I should try a classic dish first time here to give me an idea of where they are at. I ordered chicken parmigiana. I’ve eaten a fairly wide style of red sauces over the years. I have never had a red sauce that if I had been blind folded I’d not have known what it was supposed to be. Sadly, it had no flavor. Folks, that’s you who developed the recipes, sautéed red onion has NO place in a red sauce. It is the wrong flavor. The pasta was served dry. The chicken, while closer to the flavor mark, was pressed chicken! Really? There are fast food national chain restaurants that serve real chicken breasts. A restaurant serving pressed chicken? My wife had a classic dish to start ans well and ordered chicken piccata. At least she got real breast meat. It did not appear to be floured and certainly wasn’t breaded. The sauce was thin and lacked flavor. The bread rolls, too, were tasteless. The best thing was the Dos Equis draft, dark beer. Icy cold served in a frosted glass. I have never been to a restaurant that served margaritas but only served a trad margarita. It’s ok that there aren’t specialty flavors, but no strawberry?? Our waitress was obviously new. Thankfully, she was very pleasant and smiled often. And gets points for her great attitude. All the staff was nice in fact. But, geez, have you no self respect to train your wait staff before unleashing them on customers? Mariolino must know what he’s doing in terms of making money, though, since there are multiple Mariolino restaurants. The food, however, is sadly dumbed down for a rural populace that hasn’t had the advantage nor the experience of being able to eat real Italian food. $67, and with tip almost $80. I had really hoped for better food. I wasn’t trying to trample them in this review. This is just a straight, undramatized report. But Igodda ask, - Guys! Come on! Wutayadoin?!?! Geez....

This place is absolute FIRE. Let me break it down.

My girlfriend and I wanted to go here since it opened, however; we wanted to wait for the crowd to settle. After reading the reviews over the last couple weeks we knew that we needed to try it.

I have to say, when I noticed that a new restaurant had opened inside of the old Happy Garden location I was very concerned about how they could possibly bring a great enough experience to justify the building, and I am glad to say that's exactly what they accomplished.

I ordered the Chicken Mediterranean and my girlfriend ordered the Chicken Marsala, we also ordered some mozzarella sticks as an appetizer. For starters, the entree's we ordered came with a nice side salad and some of the best garlic bread I have ever eaten. The actual entree's themselves were HUGE amounts of food, something I have come to expect from an Asian restaurant. The chicken was beautifully cooked and the noodles were divine. We finished off with a Cannoli for desert and made our way home.

There was not a single thing about the experience that I didn't enjoy, staff was very nice, we were quickly seated, and the food arrived in roughly 10 minutes after ordering which is a pretty solid timeframe for a sit down restaurant.

The bathrooms were fantastically taken care of and the menu is so diverse that I can definitely see us going back several times in the future.

The price is of course a little up there, expect to pay roughly $20-30 per person, but the amount of food we received as well as the quality absolutely made it worth the value.

I am unsure if I could in good faith say that this is hands down the best restaurant in Murphy, but I admit the thought...

This is my new favorite restaurant in Murphy! The food was amazing, the service was good and the place was clean! It was relatively busy when we went, but service was still good considering how busy it was. We went around 5pm and the dinner crowd was just starting. We got cheese sticks which were pretty good. Honestly they were the least impressive thing I tried. I got the chicken marsala which was top notch. The garlic bread was amazing and for dessert I got a canoli. The canoli was also top notch. It wasn't super sweet but it had a great flavor. The restroom were clean and well stocked. The servers were friendly and service was pretty quick. It definitely got busier by the time we left and I am sure that service does get slower but I'm not sure what people expect when a new place opens and gets flooded with people. Only so many people can work at a time in a space, of course service is slower if it gets busier. Anyway, I highly recommend it! It is on the more expensive side, but definitely worth the trip. I love what they have done with the place, it has a great atmosphere. They have a wide variety of foods (mostly Italian) pizza, pasta, subs, and burgers were the main options. It's also nice that it has plenty of parking avaliable and easy to get in and out of...