Centro 336 — Restaurant in Town of Southampton

Our evening at centro was just wonderful. From the start, we spent about an hour at the bar with Chris our bartender who was great with his service and personality. The Happy hour has half price special on certain drinks and beer (wine $7 and beer $4) along with appetizers like their delicious pizzas. The bar is beautiful as well as the dining room. They also have a room for private parties. The restrooms are well decorated as well, which is important.

We sat in the dining room and quickly, out bus service took action offering water, tap or sparkling, a tray of olives, cheese and oil and delicious crusty italian bread.

Our waitress Kadie was perfect in every way. Her service, suggestions and personality were outstanding. It's important to have great staff that know how to communicate with personality, and she does.

For appetizers, we started with the surprising calamari salad ($16). Surprising because we expected a cold salad but this calamari was beaded and seasoned perfectly and lightly fried with a combination of greens and dressing added. The fritto misti (fried calamari $17) was perfect served with sauce. The grilled octopus (19) was tender and coffee with a delicious chutney.

For dinner, I had the bucatini with nona's meatballs (25). At first, this dish looked kind of small, but after I started, you could see that this bowl was loaded up wth the pasta as well as the meatballs. The parmigiana melanzo (eggplant $25) was ginormous with a layer of cheese on top. The Orecchiette ($27) was presented well and was enjoyed by our guests along with the linguini pescatore ($31).

For dessert, we had the tira misu ($11), 3 cannolis ($11) and ricotta cheesecake (you guessed it, $11). The cannolis were delicious, she'll crunchy with a drizzle of chocolate. The Tira misu was delicious as well. I wasn't too excited about the cheesecake, small, but it was ok. Three cappucini and 1 double esspresso finished us off!!!

Overall, this was our first time at Centro and we will definitely be back. In terms of price, it is a bit pricey but it is good to splurge on yourself from time to time. We will be back again! Total bill of fare for 4 was $360 with tip. This did not include our...

I'd like to rate Centro higher but based on last night's experience I just can't. I think that the popularity of the restaurant is working against the smooth running of the overall operation. Saturday night, very crowded. Our party of four were seated on time for a 7 PM reservation and served warm Italian bread and their signature plate of olives, Parmesan cheese and olive oil. Then we waited...and waited. Finally had our drink order taken...and waited...and waited. Drinks came and we ordered our meal. And waited...and waited. Appetizers came after a long wait. The baby artichoke special was tasty and nicely presented in a copper pan but was not as advertised. They were not baby artichokes. They were definitely adult. Caesar salad was good. Portion size enough to share. Then we waited...and waited. We were seated 45 minutes before the appetizers came and another 45 minutes befor the mains showed up. Eggplant parm was good, carbonara also good but surprisingly not the typical creamy preparation. Pappardelle Bolognese good...but initially came out with not enough sauce. It returned from the kitchen sufficiently saucy and the true meat stew that Bolognese should be. My gnudi with pomodoro and lamb meatballs was very good. Again, large portions...shareable or take home able. Clearly the kitchen had big problems trying to keep up with demand. We passed on dessert having been seated over two and a half hours, all in. I like a leisurely dinner but the overall wait for service was distracting.

The front of the house and wait staff is friendly and tried hard but were overmatched by the kitchen issues. I believe they would benefit from a higher level of training. As an example, runners put plates down out of rotation. Not a big deal but indicative of a possible lapse in training or otherwise hiring inexperienced help. The main dining area is all hard surfaces making conversation difficult in a full house.

We will try Centro again...but maybe not for a while in the hope that time and training will smooth out the rough edges. Too many other good options on...

Dreadful experience, a place to forget... We had booked a table for two at 5 pm on a Friday. As we were entering the place, we liked a table located in a very nice open space, so we asked for it to the hostess... she said that one was for a party of four, so she directed us instead farther inside to a table for two in a very unappealing place. The restaurant was practically empty... So, we insisted that we would rather prefer the table for four, as being early we would certainly be releasing the table before peak hours. She said "OK, but you will have to eat fast" ... To be honest we never expected such an awkward response! As we don't want to be rushed for dinner, we decided to move to the table for two she initially suggested. Things will get worse... On their website they are including a "PRIX FIXE" menu which includes 2 courses at a fixed price, available Wednesday through Monday 4pm to 6pm. As we were not handed over the fixed price menu initially by the hostess, we asked for it to the waitress. She said, "let me check if it's available". We were wondering why it wouldn't be... After a short while the waitress showed up with the fixed price menus which up to that point had been concealed from us! Things would still get even worse... Only 15 minutes have passed, when we witnessed a party of two being seated by the same hostess at the "table for four" we initially wanted, while at the table beside us an extremely loud party of ten were being seated! Even the manager was sympathetic toward s us: she came over to apologize for the excessive noise. By the time we were leaving around 6:30pm the entire place was no more than 30% full. Just to mention that we tipped our waitress Nadine generously, as her service was OK, even though she never checked on us... but we will never ever be coming back to this...