Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Raleigh

We had occasion to catch an early dinner at Mike's Italian Kitchen in Knightdale recently. I am not totally crazy about restaurants in shopping centers, especially when it follows a failed pizza place. But we were pleasantly surprised by the meal and we felt we actually got to dine in Eastern Wake County, a rarity.

Brothers Mike and Gino Pascarella, formerly of Italy, put together what looks like a great menu, serving authentic old world cuisine tempered with a few Anglo favorites like pizza.

We started with a really fresh salad drenched in homemade ranch and the brothers are also noted for homemade Italian dressing; good stuff! We opted for our favorite, veal parmigiana, which was tasty and tender and well complimented by an original tasting sauce. I don't really care for the penne pasta but I could have had it replaced with linguini or spaghetti noodles and next time I will.

The bread is homemade and very good, but you may have to ask for it hot. There was no consideration for dessert but they sounded sinful.

The Pascarella Brothers seem to be serious in their intent to provide authentic, reasonably price Italian dishes and they have paid close attention to service as the wait staff is very attentive. If there's an area lacking, there's not much décor or the decoration stage of the restaurant is still in its infancy.

But the food is the first consideration. I miss the days of eating in the kitchen with the boys in Raleigh's Casa Nicola. But hey, forgetaboutit, the Pascarella Brothers are now in Eastern Wake and for now, I'm a gonna giva...

My family used to frequent this establishment a few times a week. The service was great, they always seemed warm and friendly. That all changed today. I ordered two pizza’s two days ago and one was over cooked, this happened the week before when I ordered 2 individual slices. My son picked them up and I didn’t notice until I arrived home. I called and was told to bring they back, I forgot to bring them and just purchased an extra large and discarded the slices. Today I went in to replace the pizza, I did forget to call, but didn’t think it was a big deal since the pizza was intact, we order from them often and last time I was told to bring the food back. The woman just repeated two days, even before I was finished my sentence. She did acknowledge we are frequent customers and then walked away. Her husband asked to see it and said it just looks like you forgot about it, but I will remake. He could not see that accusing a customer of lying especially one who spends so much money every month is at the very least a bad decision...

We're visiting Raleigh from Pittsburgh, we ordered online as it was such a large order, a stromboli, salad, mozz sticks, and okra. We also Asked for extra cheese and croutons on our salad... Our bill was about $51.00

Apparently unless you PERSONALLY call them and tell them not to, a stromboli, that i only wanted pepperoni and cheese on, came with green peppers, onions, pepperoni and ham.... I called them asap, told them I have kids that will not eat that. We've been waiting an hour on our meal... After a few minutes arguing with me over who's fault it was, because I didn't know to call and change it, because IM NOT FROM HERE, I asked if he was going fix this and help me feed my kids or keep arguing with me??? He said if I wanted another, i could come get it...

What the hell kind of customer service is that?!?!

Terrible people. Terrible business. I'm sending my love with Karma. ...