Carmine's Restaurant & Catering — Restaurant in Town of Amherst

Food was good, service and ambiance (or lack of) needs improvement. My wife and I went to dinner reservations early on a Saturday. It was not crowded when we arrived on time. We ordered a couple of appetizers and my wife got a drink after we were seated. The drink came in a reasonable time. We were warned one of the appetizers might take a bit longer. We weren't in a rush, so ok, no big deal.

My wife said her drink was okay, but not really that great. The appetizers were good, and frankly more food than we realized we'd get, so no problems there, even with a brief delay in getting them. Where it started to go off the rails was with the entrees. It took seemingly forever to get them and no one came by to check on us in that time. I started to wonder if we were forgotten somehow. Things were starting to get busy, but we had our orders in well before things picked up, so not sure what was happening in the back.

The food came out eventually and it was also good. No complaints there. However, at this point we'd been there about 90 minutes so I was ready to go. We started to head out the back entrance where we came in (because most of the parking is out back), and we were stopped and (somewhat rudely) told we couldn't go that way because there was a private party.

Not sure how I was supposed to know that, but two things here: 1) it was raining and a bit cold and now I have to walk around the entire building to get to the parking lot because you have only a handful of spaces up front, and 2) maybe block it off with a sign or something instead of physically blocking me on my way out? I mean, I get it, but, c'mon. If that's where your parties are held, make a path for everyone else to get out to their cars. This doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing.

Anyway, even though the food was good, the ambiance is sorely lacking, the staff (although mostly friendly) was not overly attentive, and things just generally took too long to happen. We wanted to try something different from our usual places, but this would be low on my list to visit again because of the overall experience. If I'm spending over $60/person, I can get a better overall experience at any number of places in the area. I can't think of any reason I'd go here again as a result. I wouldn't tell anyone to avoid it, but it did not meet overall expectations and I don't think I'll be back, at least not...

Don't usually write reviews, but this needs to be said. This restaurant was packed and I have no idea why. The hostess was less than friendly to us as newbies, but spent a great deal of time speaking with what I can only guess were "regulars". We arrived at 6:50pm, and she told us our 7:00pm reserved table was not ready. That's fine, but she didn't say "you can wait in the bar area", she just dropped us. So we ordered drinks at the bar, my son tipped over a beer. The hostess, who was at the bar talking, turned around to see what happened then turned back to her friends and continued talking, while we scrambled to get enough bar napkins to mop up the beer. We were seated, and the table behind us was empty, and the hostess came over to move a chair from the empty table and slammed the chair into the back of my chair. I asked her if she needed me to move.....No, was the response. Three meals were ordered, chicken mediterreanean salad, gnocchi, spaghetti. Salad was a lot of iceberg, canned artichokes, grilled chicken, lots and lots of feta and roasted red peppers. For 10.99, not so much!!! The gnocchi were soggy, greyish, unappetizing lumps of potato and flour.....my son, who normally loved these, tried one and pushed the plate away. And the spaghetti sauce was unremarkable and not worth a second mouthful. No idea what their specialty is, but if you can't get gnocchi or sauce right, not sure if it's worth a try. We will not...

My family and I ate here today, Mother’s Day. My sister brought my moms gift inside, a clear vase with fresh picked flowers. $50 worth of flowers from a Buffalo flower shop. This was accidentally left behind. We called prior to 8 pm when they closed, I left a message. They did call back but we found out the flowers were gone. Now they blamed this on the table who came after us, they also said they don’t know who it was. Today’s seating was reservation only, their voice mail even said so and that they were booked. I worked at a local Italian restaurant I know a day like today needs to be organized and seating is usually selected based on size of the party. I am guessing they do have record who sat there next. However, my family and I left an hour ish prior to calling. The party would still be there, if anyone else even came after us. It’s obvious the flowers were taken by an employee. It’s so sad that belongings left behind can not be trusted in a restaurant of this “quality”. I don’t think we will ever return. Very...