Carrabba's Italian Grill — Restaurant in Plant City

(New review) had to drop it from a 5 to a 3 star. I've been to this restaurant a LOT since my first review and only once was service subpar but never the food. This Sunday was not good by any means. (Not a busy night by far) Lets start with the waitress, she got to the table(7-10min after we were seated) to ask what we wanted to drink and ordered the appetizer, someone else brought the drinks out. took our waitress a bit before she showed back up to ask what we wanted to order, after that I think she came back once before the food arrived. 1 bread basket showed up for 4 people which amounts to approx 2 pieces each, eventually the salad arrived everyone finished them and waited for our appetizer, someone else saw this and brought us a 2nd bread while we waited. Our waitress who hadn't been seen since our initial order came by to let us know the appetizer would be out soon. Everything was brought to us by someone else this entire time ( drinks, bread, salad, appetizer, main entrees.) She never even came by to ask if we needed refills, at some point someone came by with drink refills but this was random and only one was needed at the time but they brought 3. Nothing had been cleared from the table until the main entrees came out and only by the person who brought out the food since you couldn't put them on the table with all the empty dishes. we stacked them ourselves thinking our waitress would notice so they could be removed she clearly never noticed. I almost had to get up and go find our waitress to ask for the check at the end since she was constantly MIA. Now we get to the food. Everything was really good until we got to our actual dinner. Ordered my sons steak, a 10oz sirloin to be cooked medium, came out and it was rare sent it back to be cooked more and came back out rare just slightly more cooked but not enough to be considered even medium rare. The rest of us got the shrimp and fillet Toscana also ordered medium, 1 was rare and shrimp was under cooked. At this point I asked for the manager who is always very polite, she apologized and offered to have the shrimp and meat cooked more which I declined since we had already tried that with the steak and whoever was cooking clearly doesn't know what medium is. She also offered to discount our meal, I told her that was fine but more importantly to have a discussion with her cook since this is the first time I've ever not liked my food from here and I have been there close to a dozen times already. Unfortunately we left 2 plates almost completely untouched and decided to take the other 2 home with us. The manager did give us 15% off the bill but Unfortunately for the food and service it only irritated me more, I left feeling like I wasted $133. I will most likely go back another time but if this had been my first visit I would have asked for my money back and never returned.

(Original review 12+months ago)Went Saturday night. Arrived at 7:30 and got seated quickly, the waiter was fantastic, and the timing of the food after the appetizers was perfect. It was relaxing, and all 5 different orders at our table were perfect. I'm definitely going back to try out more of what they have to offer. We were all happy with full stomachs...

Very disappointed.

Atmosphere was as expected and the hostess was charming. That's the only positive component of our visit tonight 8/24/23.

Calamari app was overdone and both smaller in portion than previously and rife with crumbs and clumps of breading devoid of calamari.

My wife's pollo Rosa Maria was fine, though nothing special.

I made the mistake of ordering the Italian classic trio. Don't make my mistake. The lasagna portion was the size of and tasted like a charcoal briquette. The interior was chalky and dry while the exterior, though thinly covered in sauce, was so over baked it needed a steak knife to cut it. The parmesan chicken fared no better. I expected a thin piece of chicken and was not disappointed. However, it was so overdone that it had no juices left in it. The edges were crunchy like a cracker, and the barely melted cheese and splash of red sauce failed to hydrate this poultry to what I'd call food. A coaster would've compared favorably to this poor abused sliver of chicken breast. The only reason I didn't leave hungry is because the fettuccini Alfredo was marginally palatable. While it didn't arrive hot, it at least had enough fluidity to the sauce to help wash down some of the coaster and charcoal it was served with.

I needed the Alfredo to wash down my food because our server RACHEL F never offered or brought drink refills. I understand team service, but she was never the one to bring the initial drinks and bread or the bread re order we did get. The attached picture is our table at the end of our visit.

Note the desperately empty glasses, if you can discern them from EVERY OTHER piece of plate ware ever brought to the table. Our table was never pre-bussed at all. Bread, salad, appetizer, soup and dinner plates proudly on display by Rachel, perhaps as a flex on the other servers to brag about her add on sales? I'd take it personally but as we left we saw at least 3 other tables in a similar state where guests had (presumably) recently departed.

What we didn't see, however, was a manager in the dining room, much less coming to check on our experience. Perhaps they were out back smoking weed with the bus boy?

We may return to A Carabbas in the future, but no time soon and definitely not to THIS one. The food was awful, service distinctly lacking, and it could have been managed this well by a 19 year old stoned high...

Yesterday April 4 my family and I decided to visit your location Carrabbas Italian Grill in Plant City, Fl. I knew it would be busy because of holiday, so I decided to call ahead to get my name in the list for 12:45. My family and I got there at 12:30 to check in with host and she told me it would be about 20-25 min wait even with the call ahead since they had other parties waiting as well (we where 4 adults/2 children) I said it was ok. We waited as we saw every party being seated, bigger than us and smaller than us. We waited, waited, waited, waited, until our host came up 1hr later and said “They where still waiting for a party to leave for them to sit us that it would be another 10 min”. Finally I decided to go in around 2pm to wait for my table (because of COVID we prefer to wait outside), I saw parties of 4,3,5 being seated and us being ignored (take note I was there before them). The host apologized over and over to us but for me this is unacceptable specially if your system is a fist come first serve. My party of 6 was seated in a booth after obviously being upset. Then It was very disturbing to me that the area that we where seated had more than 5 empty booths/ tables and plenty of waitresses to take care of them. We had to wait being skipped, with disregard of my family for over 1.5 hrs when initially I was told 20-25 min with a call ahead. I feel that spending over $150 in your restaurant was a waste because of the lack of consideration of your staff. Take note we love Carrabba’s and been to this facility and your Brandon location many times. But by far yesterday was awful, inconsiderate, and lack of respect for my time.

PS. ( I took a photo of how empty the area we where sitting was while being seated in the first...