Carlos & Carlos Restaurant — Restaurant in Wheeling Township

Carlos & Carlos are located in downtown Arlington Heights next to Salsa 17 (should be renamed Salt 17, but you can see that review on their page). They have the corner space and in the warmer months have a lot of outdoor seating.

I had been here before with my wife and parents and sat outside and it was a beautiful night with lots going on outside and the meal was good. You saw I wrote "was good" (foreshadowing...)

We visited with another couple for a Saturday night dinner. And we were seated right away. And then they proceeded to ignore us for nearly half and hour. A server would approach us and say they'll be right with us as they were bringing something (food, drinks, napkins, bills) to other tables, but no one came by us. We had long ago finished looking at our menus and were looking at drinks, but by the time a manager came to our table to see how we were doing and then noticed the menus on our tables, he finally asked if we had been helped. We said no and were about to get up and leave. I'm sure we could have walked into Peggy Kinneanens (sp?) or Cortland Garage or Mago and been served right away. He said he'd get the server and the guy came over looking unhappy. Oh, I'm sorry, did we bother you with having to take our order? Blow it out your butt, Magoo.

Anyway, we were long past ordering wine and just stuck with water (it was already 8pm and we knew they'd be booting us out as soon as we finished our meals).

A couple salads were ordered, the roasted beet salad and the La Bella. I recall their being an issue with the beet salad, but we complained to another server as ours never came by. We had to flag down the bus boys to get water refills.

Finally our server returned with our dinners. I ordered the Pollo Piccata as that is my go to at Italian restaurants (especially when it looks like they have other typical dishes that they put their own spin on (gnocchi had an olive oil sauce - really? Not a vodka sauce or marinara? Nope. And when you start changing menu items, they tend to mess them up. I asked for no capers in my sauce and still received capers. Ick.

Other orders were the bacciolo, biete, and linguini. All were okay and a tad salty.

Did we get dessert? No. By the time we got our dinners and finished, they were closing and our server immediately brought our check during dinner and said, "no rush, whenever you're ready". Um, by dropping it off, you're essentially rushing us.

We then purposefully stayed and waited until they were cleaning tables and turning chairs over to pay our bill and leave.

We all stopped at Dairy Queen for dessert.

With so many Italian restaurants in the area, I think I can...

The food was pretty good which is why my experience was even 1 star. From the moment I sat down with my wife I felt snarky glares from the waiter throughout the entire time we were there. He said maybe 5 words to me on top of “what can I get you?”, but was very interested in coming back to the table every 5 minutes to start a new conversation with my wife, telling her she’s beautiful. When the waiter found out my wife was from Bulgaria, but also spoke some Spanish, he felt the need to confirm with my wife in Spanish that I was an “American Griengo”, snickering as if I wasn’t there. I have literally never heard the term used in a positive manner and I found that exceptionally off putting especially considering this is Arlington Heights, IL, not Tijuana. After that, of course two other Hispanic servers decided they also needed to come over and explore my wife’s basic Spanish knowledge. Couples go to dinner to converse with themselves not the help. Very inappropriate. Even she was annoyed by the one sided attention. On top of this when it came time to pay my wife and I decided to use one of our new credit cards which I hadn’t called in yet so we paid on her card. Once I had signed the check our waiter decided it was appropriate to make a “joke” to me, “enjoy the rest of that wine. She paid for it”. Honestly, if it wasn’t for these review threads I would have put them in their place on the spot and made them feel like a grain of parmesan on the floor, but why make a scene. It felt like I took my wife to the zoo and went to the chimpanzee exhibit only to have the chimps pleasure themselves to my wife on the other side of the glass. I personally dislike almost everything about Trump and teenagers in their devices all day, but after my experience at Carlos and Carlos I am rooting for the wall to be built, and would rather have a 16 year old serve my food, shut up, and go back to his phone in the corner unless I ask for something else. (my “joke”) I hope nobody else has this experience, and it appears by the list of great comments my experience was the exception. Needles to say we will go drop $100+ at some other mid...

I hadn't been here in a few years and i remember it being very good. Well, i was just here this past Saturday night and it was severely disappointing ... I actually called in the early afternoon to make a reservation for 8pm but was told to "Just come in." We arrived at 8 and as we walked into the restaurant a young pregnant girl approached us and couldn't have been more rude. When she approached us, all she said was, "I'm outside". First off we had no idea who this person was. We eventually figured out she must be the hostess, but she was not friendly AT ALL! Terrible way to greet a customer. Luckily another employee noticed this and took us immediately to a table. We ordered a Wedge Salad which was HORRIBLE! The lettuce looked old and wilted and warm of all things. We ordered a Salmon Ravioli Appetizer which was also not very good. The Filet I ordered was decent and my wife had some Pasta which was just okay. Lastly and most importantly, the place is very dated and DIRTY! If you look up, there is SO MUCH dust and dirt on the vents , the walls , the ceiling. It's terrible! Also there is back of the house stuff visible everywhere. If you go to the bathroom, all the boxes of Liquor and condiments are just out in the open . The station where I'm assuming they make the fresh pasta is also very cluttered and dirty ... Overall, a terrible experience. Other then the nice lady that seated us and our Server, it was really sad and bad. I will...