Frank's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Pembroke Park

Was referred here by some friends who have been coming here for years. Great recommendation.

The building is non-desctip on a main street in Hollywood. Our relatives who live there realized they had driven by more times than they can count and hadn't noticed it.

The owners came over and talked to us, so nice.

We ordered a bunch of food- and ate to much!

Appetizer was stuffed mushrooms. Never had any like it, heavy on bread crumbs I think parmeson and garlic. Anyway really good.

They brought out the garlic parmeson rolls soon after. Those are worth the visit. Soft, hot, rolls sitting in garlic olive oil with parmeson sprinkled on top. Amazing!

I was told to order chicken Marsala. I added a cup of pasta figoli (sp?) Soup. It was a white bean soup with pasta. I think olive garden tries to do this, but this tasted homemade and would be amazing on a snow day up north.

I added Fettuccine Alfredo for an up charge rather than the pasta in red sauce they normally serve. Great choice. Great homemade flavor too. Lots aof parmeson too- so good.

The chicken Marsala was excellent. This is not a negative critique- but the wine they use for the sauce was a little sweet for me. Overall was a great dish and anyone ordering would be happy with it.

We had two lasagna s and stuffed shells. All phenomenal- full of ricotta cheese and once again tasted homemade. So good.

The kicker was the pizza. Omg! Phenomenal! Next time I am in town we will be getting pizza 🍕 here. Some of the best NY crust I've had. Big foldable pieces with great sauce cheese and toppings. Crispy crust without being chewy. So good!

One thing I noticed was the obvious regulars coming in who had moved south from the north east. It is clear they liked the home cooking.

Awesome job and...

Let me begin with that one of my favorite fine dining is Italian gourmet food, especially when it's a mom and pop's family owned shop and Frank's has it! My family and I were greeted and served by the granddaughter of the original restaurant owner, which I thought was pretty cool. So we ordered, I included a picture of the receipt, and everything came out accordingly, which to me is an important part of the experience. They did a great job. 👍 My family really enjoyed the food and so did I, we even finished it off with some amazing tiramisu, which I try in every Italian restaurant I go to and this one is great. The only thing that threw me off was the included gratuity, don't get me wrong, she deserved a good tip and on the menu it says it, but it doesn't say a percentage and on the bill it says "custom amount"? which to me means they put whatever they wanted to get, right? I don't know, I don't want to take away from all the great qualities I experienced, and I've even worked at a restaurant before and I get it, but for two adults and a baby? You can make your own conclusions. Either way, thank you guys at Frank's Italian Restaurant, the food and service were very good, but I give a four out of five stars. I'll probably do take out next time unless they do it on that too,...

Beware of dishonest pricing/tipping practices!

First off, the food is good (not great) and the atmosphere reminds me of the Italian place down the street from my house where I grew up. Laid back, local friendly, solid Italian-American fare.

However, when my bill came, I was shocked to see the total much higher than I expected based on the menu prices. Looking more closely, I saw that they included a “Custom Amount” which was equivalent to a 34% tip as a line item on my bill, along with the actual food I ordered. That is roughly double a standard tip, and there is no option to decline. If it was mentioned on the menu, it was fine print that I didn’t see, and you won’t either.

Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the receipt declared the amount including that giant automatic tip as “Pre tip amount”, and then asked for another tip, suggesting 18-22%.

Miami restaurants are infamous for trying to get double tips, but this was a level of brazen dishonesty that I had never seen. I’m not sure it’s even legal. They deserve to be called...