Casa Carbone Ristorante Italiano — Restaurant in Raleigh

The food was EXCELLENT! From entree to wine to dessert. Really top notch. Sadly, the service was terrible and the owner’s response was unacceptable. I don’t think poor service is common; the server for the tables around us was quite attentive.

Here are the things we noticed:

Server clearer our bread plates with my knife on it when he brought the entrees. He didn’t bring a fresh knife, and was away so long that I had to flag down a busser to request a knife.

The server checked on us once or twice while eating, but then left us alone for so long that we decided not to eat our dessert there. Instead, we requested our dessert to go, boxes and our bill all at the same time. From start to finish, we were there 2 hours.

When the server took our bill, he was gone with our credit card for so long that we started to become anxious.

When we asked the busser to send the manager to our table, he instead sent our server back to us. I explained that we didn’t dock his tip, but wanted to provide some feedback. His response after I finished sharing was, “Did the food come out too slow?” (In fact, the food was excellent!) And to say that the new credit card machines were really slow, hence the delay with our card.

The manager never came; so we left.

We called on our drive home and asked for the manager. We spoke with the owner. I explained that, having been in the restaurant industry myself, I wanted to provide constructive feedback, and I outlined everything discussed above. His response: “The credit card machine isn’t slow; I saw your credit card sitting up here for awhile. The server forgot about it.” “If you have poor service like that again, let me know. I’d rather serve you myself than you have poor service.” And “the busser is 2 weeks into the job and might have misunderstood, thinking you were asking for the server.”

Poor service is one thing. I have patience for that, so long as the server is open to constructive feedback. We did not appreciate the server lying to us about the credit card machine. And we did not appreciate the owner’s lack of interest in making it right.

We really were interested in providing an opportunity for the sever to understand why he might be getting small tips for other customers. If the busser had sent the manager as we requested, or even if the server had been receptive & apologetic instead of blame shifting, we would have been quite content to leave it at that.

When we called and spoke to the manager, if the manager had offered to make it right instead of offering excuses and admitting that his server lied to us (without offering to make it right), we would have been content at that.

However, since nobody accepted responsibility much less offered to make it right, I feel that our only recourse is to post a public review.

Based on our experience tonight, we’d strongly recommend ordering take out and enjoying the food in the comfort of your own home. At least, that’s what we plan to do next time! The food is too good to not ever eat again, but our experience with the owner was...

I want to start by saying that everyone we interacted with, including our waitress, was very friendly. I really hate to have to write a poor review like this, but I had a very poor experience overall and feel obligated to say something.

We were seated fairly quickly, however once this happened, no one came to our table for quite some time. We didn't get menus and ended up using our phones to figure out what we wanted to eat. Someone brought us water and bread, which was appreciated, but she didn't take our orders or even say anything to us, so we just sat and waited. Around 30 minutes passed before we finally stopped a waitress walking by and asked if she could take our order. We really wanted to be polite and I hope we did not come across as aggravated. The waitress said she was very sorry multiple times that no one had come to take our order yet, which was appreciated and I'm sure it wasn't her fault by any means. I know things happen, but it was just a let down having to wait so long.

We finally ordered and it took another 30+ minutes for our food to actually come out. I ordered spaghetti with meat sauce and was given spaghetti with marinara sauce instead, and it wasn't even hot. At this point the restaurant was actually closed as it was 9PM, and I really did not want to be the person who made kitchen staff work later to remake something for me, so I didn't say anything at the time. I was hungry and just wanted to eat and go home, so I did, and it wasn't bad by any means, but I think if it had been what I ordered and been hot I would have definitely liked it more. After the long wait to have our order taken and get our food, it was a big let down quality wise.

I came here at the recommendation of my mom, who said she has been coming here for a long time and thought my boyfriend and I would enjoy it, but he asked not to come back after the experience and I can't say I really blame him. I really hope this was just an off night as I would personally like to come back, but I really wanted to share my experience in hopes it may be helpful...

Worst Italian food I have ever eaten. I heard several people in Raleigh talk about how amazing this place is, but they must not get out much, because this place is really poor quality. For starters, they didn't have what I wanted to drink. I settled for sweet tea, but oh wait, they didn't have that either. The salad dressing (ranch) tasted good. I am glad because all I had to put it on was a bowl full of cheap lettuce with 1 sliver of cucumber, 3 slivers of onion and 2 tiny cherry tomatoes. My calamari was practically raw - the breading was tasteless and pale and undercooked. The sauce was horrible and bland (tasted like spaghetti sauce out of a can). I had to add salt and pepper to it just to make it edible. My entree, veal scallopini was gross. I ordered it because it said it was cooked in a really spicy tomato based sauce with mushrooms. However, it was the same bland tasteless sauce used as a dipping sauce for my calamari. And all I had was a small plate with about 3-4 thin pieces of unseasoned veal (at least that was what it was supposed to be) a few bland canned mushrooms and a disgusting tasteless sauce. To top it all off, the service was the worst I have had in Raleigh (and I've been working here a month eating out every meal). HORRIBLE!!! I wasted $34.00 of my hard earned money and not one single person in this entire establishment EVER asked me the question "Is everything OK?" If they would have, I might not be so quick to post...