Carmine's on Penn

The food, drinks and service were very good. It’s family style ordering. We had a 7 drinks, a bottle of wine and 3 salads 2 large dishes, a small dish, and a dessert. Tab was $388 so we hit just under $500 with tip. Seemed a bit more than I expected, but the short rib and polenta and clam sauce linguine was very good.

Food was good - and we had a lot of food allergies in our group, so we weren't easy, but they were very accommodating. However, service was uncharacteristically bad. Our server was very nice - when he appeared, but that wasn't often. We've been here many times, never had this happen. Disappointed.

One of the worst restaurant and customer service experiences we have had. We ordered gluten free pasta for the whole table to make it easy for servers and sharing. We later found out after eating a good portion of the meal that all of the dishes we ordered were gluten meals. My sister in law had to leave the restaurant immediately for medical attention. They brought out our correct orders a long time after. At the end they still charged us full price and said they were comping a bottle of champagne that was purchased by a friend remotely. We later called back multiple times asking that something more should be done to make this matter right and we received no calls from the owner since the managers said they weren't able to do anything about it.

Mid

Such a great place for dinner.

Went here for my husbands birthday. The atmosphere and look of the place is very cute and cozy. It makes it look like it’s the local Italian restaurant to go to. But when we sat down it took our waiter 15 minutes to come talk to us and there’s a 22% already included gratuity, which was painful to pay on that service. The Caesar salad was great but the pasta was fairly average. Having to share family style can be challenging too.

We had a wonderful time! AMAZING food, tasty cocktails. I didn't have reservations and they were able to accommodate us quickly. Parking is a bit of a challenge as we had to park over 4 blocks away especially on a cold and chilly night. The lack of valet distracted from the experience.

Best food in town, great and friendly service. I recommend carmine's to everyone I know. You will not be disappointed

TLDR: Service and quality of food has gone downhill. Absolutely do not recommend Carmines anymore. Carmines has been a favorite of ours but lately there have been way too many cons to justify ever going back. I’ll start with the service as I think the 22% automatic service charge is what has contributed to the decline. I have no problem paying 22%, and would likely tip well above that for good service. But I have to wonder if the servers knowing they are automatically going to receive 22% makes the level of service decrease. Why work for it when you get the same no matter the service. Also frustrating as if you are on this pooled tip model, that servers wouldn’t help one another out. I was in the restroom when water was poured. They left my glass empty. Had to ask the waiter twice for water. When they portioned out the salad, one person ended up with a mountain on their plate while the last person served had only a few leaves, causing us to have to shovel around food to each others plates to make it equal. As the meal progressed, we sat there with empty glasses and drinks more than they had liquid in them. Had to ask continually for water. Pretty annoying to be dying of thirst when trying to enjoy a not inexpensive meal. The worst part? I saw the server look at our table multiple times and ignore our empty glasses. He did that cool trick of avoiding eye contact to avoid seeing what we needed. We would have had a considerably higher bill if we would have been able to order more drinks. At the end of the evening, we asked for takeout boxes. Not our server, but someone else came over with one big and one small box and started dumping the dishes in without asking how we wanted the leftovers divided. Since it is family style, we asked for two of the same size boxes so that we could share the leftover dishes equally. She stared at us looking annoyed and grudgingly returned with the correct boxes. The drinks and food- wine selection was fine. The bourbon selection was sup par at best. This isn’t Olive Garden, but the whiskey/bourban choices are. The food was okay. Chicken Montana was pretty good, but the Baked Ziti with sausage was dry and cold. House salad was fine. Also had the bruschetta which was noting to write home about. Would have been nice if a manager stopped by the tables, but no surprise, that didn’t happen. All in all, our last time visiting. We felt like we were inconveniencing them by our presence and the service was beyond awful.

We arrived at 630p and were seated. The server came to us at about 650p, even though they were not very busy. We stated that we are up for a light meal and would like the Caesar salad and one entree to split. My wife stated that she didn't want chicken, but he insisted that since there are two of us, we need two entrees. He then recommended two chicken dishes. Obviously he didn't listen. After his multiple attempts to up-sell us, we gave in. We had meatballs and linguine with vodka sauce and ravioli with overcooked/burnt tasting Bolognese sauce. At the end we were presented with a bill including a 22% service charge. I normally tip 20% given we had good service, but in this case we had no choice. The manager stated the we should have been told of this policy by the server, which we weren't and she did apologize. The sign on the table stating this policy was concealed behind the condiments and would require reading glasses to interpret the small font. This is no longer the restaurant we enjoyed years ago.