Johnny Carino's — Restaurant in Pigeon Forge

The food was great, our server was great. The problem is that the management in this location does not know how to conduct themselves professionally. When we arrived, we asked the hostess if we could be seated at a table rather than a booth. It looked like the portion of the restaurant that is predominantly tables had been closed down for the night, so she went to find a table for us and have it cleaned. We waited less than 5 minutes, as the server was preparing to take us to our table, a man who appeared to be a manager approached the hostess and in front of us said “why didn’t you just seat them?” The hostess explained that we had asked for a table and the manager continued saying “so just put them here” pointing to the room that appeared closed. It was awkward and uncomfortable for the manager to talk to the hostess like this. We were seated, and moments later a woman wearing a jacket or shirt that said “General manager” came into the room where we were seated with the male manager and started pointing out all of the issues with how the room was set, that the silverware was wrong, the table had crumbs, the salt was in the wrong place, the sugar packets were wrong… they were naming an employee specifically and referred to them as lazy. They walked away and a few minutes later the GM came in with someone else and pointed all of these issues out again, in an irritated tone, and when the person started to fix the apparent problems, the GM said “no! I’ll do it.” But then continued to point out issues. They left the room and the GM then came back and started organizing sugar packets. The male manager and another employee came back and they were all talking about another employee and were clearly upset and although I kept looking at them to hopefully show that we would prefer to dine without hearing all of this, they didn’t get the hint. I finally turned and said “surely there is somewhere else you can have this conversation and dress down your employees.” No one said anything, no one apologized, they just walked away to another space in the restaurant where I could still hear them but not quite as clearly. If folks are wondering why restaurants are understaffed, it might be because of the way management behaves and talks about their employees - in front of customers trying to have dinner.

p.s. if you’re Alex and you work at this location, you might want to look for...

WAY over priced for bad food and bad service. Expect to spend a minimum of $25-35 per person for food you will toss out. We went here yesterday and only 1 person out of 4 found the food edible. The mozzarella sticks were good, and my husband got the lasagna and we both agreed it was good as well. Myself and my eldest daughter got the chicken Alfredo. It was entirely bland and tasteless. It was more like a light butter sauce than Alfredo and the chicken they up-charge you for is an absolute joke! It was a few very thin, very tiny slices about 1 inch in length. There were only maybe 4 per plate. Ridiculous! My husband tried my food when he saw that we were not eating and agreed that it was very bland and not at all an Alfredo sauce. We took it home and fed it to the dogs so that it would not be a complete waste. I could have made good, home made chicken Alfredo 10 times over that would have been full of meat and flavor for the entire family for the cost of those 2 awful plates. My other daughter got the spaghetti, which she normally loves but barely touched as it was not good either! She took one bite of a meatball and was done with it. The sausage in the spaghetti was pretty good, but the meatballs and the sauce ruined it. For over $100 for lunch for 4 people I left with a bad taste both literally and figuratively. To make the experience worse, the waitress was rushing us the entire time even though they were slow at the time! She brought the check and was rushing us to pay while we were still eating, snatched the card like it was on fire, and then tossed it back at us when she brought it back! Her entire attitude seemed like she had better places to be and could not be finished with us fast enough. We always pre-bus our table as I have worked in restaurants before and like to leave a clean table. While we were still sitting there trying to get our boxes together and enjoying our drinks she asked us to stack all of the plates up while she directed us to clear the table. If she had given us a moment to finish our drinks and what we were doing we would have had the table prepped and ready for her! We will not return here again and I would advise everyone else to...

If there was a rating higher than 5, I'd give it!!! First time here, and we felt wanted and taken care of.

We walked in at 930pm with their closing time of 10pm which is something we try to avoid as we know it's a big challenge having worked in the service industry so we try not to burden restaurant staff that way. We had made the horrible mistake of going to Cheddars first and I wont put all the details here (thatll go in Cheddars review) but we walked out after 30 minutes of placing order & not even getting drinks.

Walking into Carino's despite the lateness, the hostess (Im sorry I didn't get her name, but she was lovely) warmly greeted us with a smile and quickly seated us. Our waiter was Ryan, and all I can say is that everyone should have Ryan to take care of them! He was so happy and pleasant and quickly got us set up with our drinks and warm bread with dipping oil. He got our order in, and it wasn't long before he was delivering our plate of italian nachos that totally blew us away. The "chips" were not ordinary tortilla chips you get everywhere else but instead light and delicate deep fried wonton wrappers (I believe as that they reminded me of) topped with sausage, peppers, olives, jalapeño cheese, etc. Omg!!! So good!!!

Ryan then brought out my hubby's lasagna and my bowl of minestrone soup. Both were equally delicious. The lasagna sauce had a nice zip, and I loved the sausage crumbles in it. My soup had a great fresh taste, and the tomato broth was rich. Both of us got ample parm topping from Ryan.

Our stay in Pigeon Forge this week has been exceptional and what I wanted for my birthday, and Im so glad we came to Carino's for our last meal before we returned home. They redeemed an evening that was almost ruined by Cheddars. Thank you for treating us so warmly. You made us feel like to you, every guest matters no matter if they are the first or the last...