Ca' Dario Santa Barbara — Restaurant in Santa Barbara

Not quite sure why this place gets a 4.6 rating? Either most of you folks don’t know good Italian or we caught them on a bad night. My wife and I went there for our 22nd anniversary. Made a reservation and communicated our special night. We ordered the melon prosciutto appetizer to start. When it arrived the prosciutto was like shoe leather and we couldn’t cut or chew it. We sent it back. They did bring us our second choice which was just okay. We ordered our main courses. Linguine and clams for me and spaghetti and “grandmas” meatballs for my wife. We also ordered a bottle of wine. When our meals arrived, we were confused. I’ll start with my linguine. No flavor. Clams in dish water. Not fresh clams. Small ones. Thickly sliced garlic cloves (not crushed) thrown in with linguine pasta and no butter or olive oil. I’ve had linguine and clams all over the world and this was by far the worst. Let’s move on to the spaghetti. The only way I can describe this dish is lazy. Diluted tomato paste marinara with olive oil poured in. Not fresh. “Grandma”s” meatballs were all rubber and had been previously frozen. These meatballs were all uniform and the same size. Ring any bells? Yes, Costco frozen meatballs people. Disgraceful. Needless to say, we didn’t finish any of it. Don’t pay $150 for a dinner for two at this place. It’s not that hard to create a fresh Italian meal for your customers. Dont cut corners for revenue. Use fresh ingredients and your customers will return. I will say that the service was good and environment attractive but the food is why we come. Hopefully, improvements in the cuisine will get better. I won’t be returning...

Feel bad writing this review, as Ca Dario is one of my favorite SB restaurants, but our experience was just plain disappointing. Ca Dario Pizzaria seemed like the ideal choice for our family, quality food with something for the kids. We got there Saturday about 11:45, expecting a crowd but there was only one other 3 top with a child as well. The hostess was very friendly, but basically running the whole place so you see her doing everthing, prep, cleanup, etc. We ordered a couple beverages, a Limonata (expecting a refreshing special Italian soda, but getting a Pellegrino in a can) and a Telegraph California Ale that was delivered in a thimble sized glass...not sure about you, but pizza needs a decent sized beer to accompany it. We ordered an artichoke as a starter and it was pretty obvious it was from yesterday's batch, cold, in a pool of coagulating oil and with a flavorless aoli...Best Foods with a touch of garlic would have been 100% better. The artichoke was so mushy, like cream of wheat texture, that my wife couldn't really eat it without gagging. The pizza was quite nice, the kids liked the cheese pizza, though it tasted identical to Trader Joes Quadro Formaggio that we often get. The carbonara pizza tasted mostly of egg custard with the occasional nice bite that had some prosciutto ...probably just not a good recipe as carbonara should be very quickly served, not reheated in a pizza oven. The worst part was watching the chef prepare the pizza from our back booth, cracking each quail egg on top, then pausing to pick out shells with his fingers. Yuck...we'll stick to downscale...

Today I made plans to go to dinner with my friend Terrie, Dinner time came around and we decided to go to Ca Dario I know it as C' Dario a small Italian restaurant at 37 W. Anapamu St. in SB. We get there I request seating for five and we are asked by the hostess if we have reservations and we don't so she says she is only seating reservations right now. She says this while looking at my friends son the whole time JOE he is 18 years old, blind and uses a cane. I felt she was a fake so I ask when the next available time is. She said 8:30pm this would make us wait 2 1/2 hours If we waited so we walk to Cafe Buenos Aires I mention I felt that she was lying to us and I decided to call Ca Dario and ask if they had available seating for two she said, yes, so at that point I said I may have my friends join us and ask if she had seating for five and the hostess response was YES!! if you come in right now we can seat you right away. This is 5 minutes after we were turned away. WOW this was completely discrimination against JOE. Do not go to this place, do not support these types of businesses. Handicap people deserve the same treatment as the rest of us. So I decided to share this here and I will do it in all the other venues I normally use. Yelp, Restaurant guy, Twitter, ect. Yeah they messed with wrong person. I will also call the owner and let him know what his staff is doing also. Very upset, but we had a great dinner at Cafe Buenos Aires and left our $200.00 with...