Carrabba's Italian Grill — Restaurant in Orem

We had a very poor experience here tonight. We were meeting with family from out-of-state and had a moderately large party of eight. My sister called ahead for seating and we arrived on time. When we checked in, the host said the table might take up to ten minutes to get ready. However, we were still waiting thirty minutes later without anyone checking back with us. Also, several other groups who came in after us, even a party of 5, were seated before us. When my sister inquired the reason for the wait, the hostess made excuses that they were slammed and that they didn't have enough servers. But we could see easily twelve empty tables, including a large round table near the host stand. Even if they were short on servers, they could have at least seated us and brought out bread and water, apologizing for the long wait.

As it was, we were finally seated about 40 minutes after our "call ahead" time. It took another ten minutes for water to be served, another 15 minutes for bread and drinks to be served, and then another 15 minutes for our salads to be served. About 20 minutes after that, our main dishes arrived. However, one member of our party didn't even get her food till after most of us had almost finished our dishes.

Additionally, the server messed up and brought out a side of soup instead of a full main dish of soup, completely forgot to bring out the dessert for another person, and then told another that they had run out of cheesecake long after the other desserts had been served.

I do need to say something about my food. I ordered the Johnny Rocco Seafood Salad. It had about five large scallops and four or five shrimp on top of a bed of greens. The scallops were very poorly cooked, somewhat mushy and falling apart, and not very warm. I hope I don't get food poisoning from what I did eat. Also, there was far too much vinaigrette on the salad; I felt like I needed a drink of water every few bites. I will not be ordering this dish again.

On the other hand, my frozen raspberry lemonade was delicious, as was my Dad's non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri. Also, I love the house specialty garlic rosemary French fries. Yum!

Unfortunately, this good food was totally offset by the poor service. Probably the worst part, was that even though we all tried to be patient and understanding, no one, not even the server or manager, apologized for the mistakes. Actually the manager never even came out to our table like the host had promised us.

I really hope this was just a fluke. As much as I have enjoyed coming here in the past, I think I'll have to be pretty hungry for their frozen lemonades or french fries to ever come...

Wow, what happened to this place? Did they change owners? Since the remodel in the last couple of months, it looks like this restaurant's dishes and ambiance have been reduced by extreme levels and now that I'm reading through the recent reviews I see many people feel the same. I thought it was strange when I pulled up Carrabba's on Google to put in a reservation and saw the reviews were much lower than they had been in the past but didn't think much about it at the time because I knew the food was always superb... But that's no longer the case.

My family and I have eaten here many, many times throughout my whole life and I'll have fond memories of how it used to be, but the environment now is sterile jam-packing as many people as they can into a space with no romantic and intimate Italian feel (that they used to have), the food portions are much smaller, and the flavors are now one dimensional. Why did they have to alter their recipes? If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

We've probably ordered parmesan chicken 30+ times over the years here (my husband's favorite), but the dish we were served yesterday was vastly different than it's ever been. Small, cold pieces of chicken, soggy broccoli, and NO side of spaghetti with the dish was greatly disappointing. Their used-to-be-gorgeous lentil and sausage soup is more spicy with out the delicate pieces of kale and other finely cut vegetables and now contains an exorbitant amount of lentils, so that flavor profile has been destroyed... My pasta was very sad and old with a cakey Alfredo sauce. I ordered the seafood Alfredo Weesie with a lemon butter sauce, and the lemon sauce should have been mixed with the rest of my seafood pasta dish but was piled on top of the mushrooms for some reason. By the time we got our food the pasta had obviously been sitting out too long and was stuck together like a pasta pie so I couldn't incorporate the lemon sauce myself 😂 I had to cut my pasta to eat it, what is this? The steak my son got was indeed what another reviewer called a "hockey puck" with two cafeteria looking scoops of potatoes, and no vegetables. No garnish, the presentation was lacking.

All and all, everything here has changed. The waiter we got was kind and well intentioned, but the flow of the meal was drastically slower than a more high scale restaurant should be. It took us 1.5 hours to get everything served with our appetizer being forgotten completely. It was all such a bad experience that we won't be going back unless something drastic happens to fix things and I see the reviews improve. I sincerely hope the management will take the time to read these reviews and...

I do not recommend going to this location...a fingernail and plastic in my food has been my experience. Plus, corporate has an issue with customer service. A few years ago, my husband took a bite of bread to find a fingernail had been baked into it. Since then, we haven't been. Recently however, we had a family emergency and this Carrabba's is down the road from the hospital so we decided to try it once again, since the fingernail incident was a few years ago. I ordered the meatballs but filled up on the appetizers so I took the remaining two home. The next day, I heated them up in the microwave in the take-home container and in my first bite CRUNCH! I thought it was cartilage or bone, luckily I was able to spit most of it out, it was a big chunk of blue plastic. It had scratched my gum, and there was a possibility I swallowed a small piece. I took pictures, sent them to my husband who was at the hospital, so he drove to Carrabba's. He was told they don't have plastic in that hue of blue (some plastics change hue when exposed to heat) and that we would be referred to corporate. We were not refunded for the dinner. Within hours, I got a call from corporate who told me that they would send me a $100 gift card if I did not seek medical care. But if I sought medical care, I couldn't have the $100 gift card. I didn't know if I needed to, and I couldn't possibly guarantee that at that time, plastic can rip your stomach and the cut on my gum could get infected, and it could take a couple days. Not only that, I told the person that I didn't even want a $100 gift card, as with both experiences, I will never eat at a Carrabba's again, but this person insisted, took my address, and told me to wait a few weeks for it to arrive in the mail. About a month and half has passed, I get a call a couple days ago from the same person who asked if I had sought medical care...no I hadn't. I was asked if the claim could be closed so I asked about the gift card. I was told there was no record of a gift card being sent but that a $25 gift card could be sent. I don't even want the stupid gift card! But here we are I was told one thing, now they're doing something else, and how convenient 'there's no record.'...but funny they have a record of my address, taken at the same time they insisted on a gift card. My check still hasn't been refunded, and they tried pushing a gift card on me, that I didn't even want. Meanwhile, the origin of the plastic hasn't been identified. I've never had plastic in my food from a restaurant before and I've certainly never had a restaurant toy with me like this, it's...