Ristorante Nina's — Restaurant in Raleigh

Wait! Two stars?!? What? That bad? Well yes and no. But BARELY two stars is the overall feeling we left Nina’s with after our experience today. Let me explain. We hadn’t been here in years so we called a couple of weeks ago to make a reservation, which we did. Today three hours before our reservation we got a call from Nina’s telling us that they are overbooked and that we could either eat at the bar for our reserved time or we would have to move our reservation to an hour later than we had scheduled originally with them. Bang. Really? Since we could not move our timing we had to accept the bar seating. Not nice. When we arrived they proceeded to show us to a table in the dining room area which they said they placed there to accommodate our original reservation. But that table was so small that two dinner plates would hardly fit on it and it was placed right by the entrance where everyone coming and going plus the wait staff and the hostess were constantly passing through. Their dining area is rather crammed with tables and offers not all that much ambiance anyway. It is loud because many parties sit close together in one large room. Numerous tables are very small and in confined spaces that won’t make you feel all that comfortable. Looking at the table we we were shown to, we asked to get the bar seating that was announced to us during their call earlier because this table … well, we would rather have left than eat there. There were numerous tables free at the bar but we could not have any of them since they were "reserved" so the bar, bar was the final destination for our meal. Initial service was slow because the entire bar area and the bar service to the other waiters was covered by only one bar keeper. She was great, but she had way too much on her hands. Bread service did come super quick right away, but then it took some time to get water and drinks ordered. We chatted and we ordered … got out appetizers and our food and we ate. Wait time for the food was also okay. The food was very good all around and different than other places, so from that perspective it was a good cahnge, but it is also not better than other places we frequent serving Italian fare. Don’t get me wrong we did enjoy the food and were not disappointed. After the meal we were presented with the bill which automatically added 4% for CC payments. This is one thing where I draw the line. These fees are COMPLETE BS and a lingering fad by restaurants purely for profiteering. No place ever charged this before COVID and prices have gone up too. Nina’s prices are rather in the upper range for comparable places and the servings aren’t so large or exceptional that they need to charge more. We eat out several times a week and most other places with great food don’t charge this fee. It's a "car dealership practice". With inflation and these nasty fee practices we can only vote with our pocket book and alert others of such practices. It's unacceptable. Period. Looking around I think that Nina’s is place that has been around for a long time and is continuing to be successful. Nina's seem to have a large clientele of "regulars"; well healed, long-time customers that go there all the time so they do not need to worry. They also have more customers than they can handle. I am not knocking the restaurant. It's a free country and they can do what they want. I am just explaining our rationale as to why it was not a good experience for us and why we won’t be back. To sum it up: This place has good food, a seemingly very large following of regulars and prioritizes their profitability over service and you will feel that. Looking through other reviews here after I wrote this one ... we are...

This is my second experience at Nina's and I don't understand the hype of this place beside the obious regulars that may frequent Nina's who mainly are of older age. I'm in my mid 40's. My wife is from Long Island and I was raised in the D.C. are so we definitely know about great Italian food. Nina's is "just ok" at best specially for paying $30 for a frutti di mare, not much taste there, presentation was Ok. We ordered something basic for our 12 yr old son since he is lactose intolerant, penne pasta with shrimp on lemon garlic white wine with no parmesan. It was terribly bland, he didnt even eat the shrimp. My wife order a chicken / pollo meal also no taste. The best thing was mozzarella, tomato and prosciutto appetizer which was fresh and tasty. As you walk in the ask you if you would likena wine list which the host / bartender asks us in front of our waitress and we said no thank you since I was to have surgery the next day. Then the waitress asks me again and gave her the same answer. It made us feel pressured and got a feeling they did not like that. Once our meals came out, our waitress kept IGNORING my calls as if she didnt hear me even when I asked for the check. She didnt even take our plates away. Finally, she decided to pay attention to us as she was taking "good care" of other tables she asked if our sons pasta was "not a winner" and I replied no it was not and then she asked if we needed a box to go. We never take our food to go specially if its not good. As she proceeded to take his plate, she asked again "not even the shrimp?" and I replied in an upset tone "No its not good!". By this time we feel discriminated by what I can only assume that we weren't the right age compared to the rest of the restaurant. I should mention we are American-Italians and know about good italian food. Finally, after TERRIBLE service and being IGNORED we received the bill to find out that she had put a 4% SURCHARGE if we didn't pay cash. I've never seen this and we go out to nice restaurants. We gave a 12% because of the HORRIBLE experience and 4% surcharge. I don't know if the surchage is standard for Nina's but I'm 100% sure we didn't have the 1stbtime we went which was a few years back. I did want to give this place a second chance. I did not catch our waitress name but she is an older lady with long brown hair with an average build. She didn't introduce herself and did not tell us about dishes of the well as the other stellar waitress they had tending to other tables. I normally don't write reviews but this was so BAD that I just had to. My family and I will NEVER step food here and we live in the surrounding neighborhoods. When the food is just barely ok and the service is terrible, there are lucky...

I really hate a bate and switch business. We went here because we seek out restaurants that have half priced wine on specific evenings. Nina's has half priced wine on Tuesdays,,, well, sorta. They told us they do have it up to a $60 bottle. For higher priced bottles its just $30 off. That was OK with us. Then we looked at the wine list and realized all the wine was around 25% more expensive than their list on their web site. They had put a significant increase on their in store menus, but not updated the web. We looked at the food menu and saw that bait and switch continued on the food as well with everything looking to be about 25% more than on the web. So we order a bottle of wine listed on the web for $34 but was actually $48 and started to enjoy our evening. The bottle we ordered was fine for the half off $24 but was in no way worth $48. The waitress brought a really small plate of bread with a bowl of some kind of dip along with it and dropped it on our table. I tried a little of the dip and found it was ONION. I use capitals because the onion was all I could taste for a while after trying just a touch of it on the small piece of bread. The little bit of bread provided seemed fresh and warm, but the waitress was nowhere to offer butter or oil and balsamic to go with it. We got our dinner and the flavor was good. I did notice that the plates were cold, but when served, the food was warm. The cold plates made the food cool down really fast. The pasta that came with my dish was very tasty, but was sitting in about 1/4" of water with a little sauce on top. As I ate it, the sauce got into the water and made a pasta soup that was not very appetizing. The main meal itself was pretty good. But due to the bait and switch pricing we will not be back...