Cucina & Co. at Rockefeller Center

I got was the caesar and it was too small portioned for its price. The service was sucky, the chicken and potatoes were soggy flavorless and horribly plated. Do not recommend.

Overpriced and overcrowded with marginal service.
I had a turkey club salad which was very good, but the fresh pepper I asked for came when I was about ¹⁄₃ into my meal. Extra dressing requested by my lunch companion came in even later. We were informed of missing menu items only after we tried ordering them. The restaurant puts on a check a suggests minimum tip of 18% (going up to 23%) — I took it as a bad joke as the service was barely deserving of a minimum gratuity. Although the food in this place seems to be good, I will not be back — the overall experience is not worth it. Wait service — 1 star; food and host — 5 stars.

Cucina & Co. Catering Manager — Thank you, thank you! Not only did you efficiently take my order for a catered breakfast, deliver on time, the platters of pastries & fruit were beautifully presented. You also executed on a last minute catered lunch order in less than 2 hours time, and delivered again, a beautifully presented array of sandwiches, salads and dessert platters. This allowed my business meeting to continue undisrupted by breaking for lunch, but also allowed for more relationship-​building time. The quality of food and presentation were an excellent value for the money.

Food is a hit and miss, and staff is not very friendly.

Maybe I made the wrong decision of ordering teriyaki chicken at what is essentially an Italian place (hey — it looked really good). Well — unfortunately the taste was extremely disappointing. The bakery items looked promising though — so maybe there’s some hope for me to go back someday.

I can’t say enough good things about this place. Given the location in Rockefeller center I am impressed that they still managed to keep their prices affordable. The location is great, and there are ample places to sit to eat. I am a big fan of their salad bar and their fresh baked options. Great service with a loyal staff! A wonderful affordably priced Midtown option.

My girlfriend and I were trying to find lunch around the Rockefeller Plaza after doing some touristy stuff. When we came upon Cucina & Co, we decided to head in there for lunch. I expected to pay high exorbitant prices for an average quality meal, considering we were in Rockefeller Plaza.
What we got was a poor quality meal for a good price. I paid almost $ 12 for a half-​chicken entrée with two sides. It was inexpensive, but the quality of food was terrible. The chicken was too dry to eat, except for the drumstick portion. The mashed potatoes were too runny, there was no fluffy consistency. The side vegetables? the best part of the meal lol.
Gf got the clam chowder. It was almost a pint’s worth for a little under $ 5. She said it wasn’t very good. I tried some of it too and thought even the Progressive can Clam Chowder taste better than the chowder at Cucina & Co.
I love the cafeteria-​feel to this place. There’s hot foods, salad bar and a drink station. You select everything you want and pay at the check-​out lines. Sadly, the food preparation here could use some work.

Definitely not worth the convenience of being in the Rock Center underground.
Also, biggest waste of money for lunch in Rock Center.
The hot bar’s food is overpriced and always subpar, forcing me to throw it out. I’ve tried everything from the rotisserie chicken, rice bowls, to pasta specials and have been disappointed every single time. Including a drink, you will spend about $ 15 on a very poor meal.
Will never return and wouldn’t advise anyone to go unless you want to waste money on very mediocre food.

Looks like Cucina is not getting too much Unilocal love. I mean I cannot comment on the restaurant, or the hot good for that matter, but the salad bar is great!
I do not know why it took me so long to find this lunch spot (Goodbye, Just Salad), but I am a sucker for make your own salad, especially with some prepared chick pea salads on the side.
A bit expensive, but tastes fresh, so I think it’s worth it! And it’s a lot quicker than some of the other Rockefeller basement lunch places.

NOTE: We went to the sit-​down restaurant; not the take-​out place.
Why the one-​star review? Because if I could give less, I would (but that is not an option on Unilocal right now).
Let me start by saying I live in New York and am aware how restaurants sometimes treat locals differently from tourists. On 12÷30÷14, my visiting relatives and I decided to have dinner at this place because: a) everywhere else was crowded; b) it was too cold to go out to another place; and c) the hostess said they could give us a table for 8 right away.
I’ll start here: the hostess had a huge attitude problem, looked me up and down as if figuring out if I was a tourist or a local, and said two things to me which automatically made me cringe:
1) «Table for eight? Are you all ordering entrees?» (Umm, say what?)
2) «If you don’t like this table, don’t touch anything and I will see about setting up another table,» when I asked for another table away from the entrance where it was terribly cold.
When we finally sat down and ordered right away, it took a while for the for the food to arrive. OK, I understand this might be due to the fact that there were 8 of us — fine. But then I noticed that there were no forks on the table. What is a restaurant that cannot even properly set the table for its customers? We had to wait another 5 minutes for 8 forks to be delivered to our table.
The entrees finally started arriving, after an eternity, and of course they brought my 3 year-​old niece’s food last: A very simple pasta dish with butter sauce! Does this really take forever to cook? And Cucina, take note: at other restaurants, they bring the kids’ food first! Remember that!
Within 2 – 3 bites of our entrees, the waiter came to our table NOT to ask how everything was, but, get this, to ask if we wanted to order dessert. I told him to come back after we were done with our main dishes. Was he freaking kidding me?
The food was at best MEDIOCRE, and after eating less than half of my $ 24 pasta dish, I asked the waiter nicely to pack it for me. It never came back and after I asked him what happened to it, he said he didn’t hear what I said so he threw it out.
I asked for the manager and that guy (Chris) didn’t even know what to do. The look on his face was just total confusion. I swear they were probably plotting to scrape the garbage in order to give me my leftovers back. In the end I didn’t want it anymore. We could have skipped the tip, but my family members are way too decent and still gave them 20%, which they did not deserve AT ALL.
I will make it my personal mission to let all my tourist (and local) friends know about the incompetence and unprofessionalism of this place to save them from being subjected to the awful treatment given to us.

The fact that I work in a restaurant I usually give places a slack for everything because I know how things work and how it feels. But I have to say this is by far the worst place to eat in knowing that it’s in a tourist spot! Hosts are terrible, gave us an attitude because we wanted to seat towards the inside since we have a kid with us and they immediately said no. Okay, I understand because servers go on a rotation so I let that pass, ignored the attitude. Server came and greeted us got our order. Took 30 minutes for the food to come out, and another 10minutes for the kids food to come out. Which is too long because usually entrees comes out atleast within the 20minute ticket time! We weren’t even half way done with our food and the server came and asked if we wanted dessert! Basically he’s trying to hurry us up! Not to mention they don’t have enough Parmesan cheese for the table!!! My aunt wanted her food wrapped because she wasn’t able to finish it, and of course the server threw out the food!!! I just had it! I called the manager and complained about the whole entire dining experience. To put the icing on top Chris, who’s the manager, DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
It’s a shame because the food isn’t bad at all, it’s the staff that makes the whole entire dining experience horrible and makes the guests not want to come back!!! I definitely don’t recommend this place!!!

Incredibly overpriced for the quality of the food and service. Asked for a side of mayo with our burger and it was a) presented like this and b) jiggled when the waitress essentially threw it down on the table. Definitely will not return.

Very pricey. Bad food. Bad service. Avoid please. We had to eat here because it was raining outside. Food is not worth the price. This is one of the restaurants that should be featured in ‘Kitchen Nightmares’!

Pretty good. Service was fast and polite. Food served quickly and it was tasty. I had the roasted chicken and it was good.
Only negative is the noisy atmosphere with very annoying background music.
Would recommend especially if you want to sit down after a long day in The Rock.
Apple tart great for desert.

Do not recommend, definitely a tourist trap. Service, food and atmosphere were lacking. Just stopped by for a quick bite to eat, bad decision. The coffee was bad, the soup I got looked horrible. The service was slow and overwhelmed due to the high amount of customers. Very small menu, not a lot of options. The only reason I give 2 stars is that the soup & coffe warmed me on a chilly NYC afternoon.

Don’t know why the reviews are so negative. My review is for hot bar lunch, but this place is really great. Serves solid, freshly prepared food in great portions and for a great price.
I just ate a steak and rice pilaf lunch and bought a half chicken and mac & cheese lunch for my friend — both were $ 11.50 each and they came in a sizeable portion and are quite tasty!
Maybe most of the negative reviews are for dine-​in, but if you work around the area and intend to grab a quick lunch, this place delivers good food with great variety and at a comfortable price point

Excellent choice. I went nuts on the fruit & salad bar and also ordered a mozzarella basil tomato panini. The dining room wasn’t open yet but we dined just outside the takeout area. It was exactly what we were wanting. Score! Super fresh produce and delicious!

Came here on Sunday with my boyfriend, his brother, his niece and nephew who were in town from Milford (or Middlefield… I forget — all these towns begin to sound the same after awhile).
After doing some site-​seeing around Rockefeller Center with them we developed quite an appetite… and that’s putting it mildly… it was like 1ish and I hadn’t eaten anything all day, plus dinner the night before was like 5 pieces of chicken the size of McDonald’s chicken nuggets, lol. I was ready to eat a cow.
This isn’t exactly a neighborhood filled with culinary greatness and the first thing that popped into my head was Cucina & Co. Years ago during my make-​up artist days in Herald Square, I was OBSESSED with the Cucina & Co. in Macy’s cellar. Their «make your own pasta» station was sinfully amazing!
They made their alfredo, marinara basil and vodka sauces on the premises, offered different types of pastas, delicious add-​ones like blackened chicken, shrimp and more. The shrimp scampi was amazing, reasonably priced and a fantastic portion which sometimes because both my lunch and dinner. Unfortunately this Cucina & Co. is the complete opposite. It was so disappointing and I was embarrassed at how dismal it was.
So the actual location is fine. Everything looks relatively clean, well stocked and the people in the kitchen were friendly. The food offering in the rotisserie section were sparse… I was going to get chicken tenders but I was told it would take about 20 minutes, despite there being about 10 in front of me… they were old and apparently just there for display purposes. Kudos to them for the warning I suppose.
I ended up getting their mac n’ cheese as did my bf’s niece. The boy ordered their chicken lasagna, his nephew got and brother (I think) got the baked ziti and they ordered a large order of fries for them to share.
The Mac and cheese was decent… considering that it could have been worse. My order was freshly out of the oven, something tells me that in about an hour it might have been awful. It wasn’t creamy, overly cheesy or crispy anywhere. I like my mac n’ cheese creamy with a crispy, baked top layer… doesn’t have to be overly cheesy as long as the flavor is there. The flavor was there because yours truly used two packs of the black pepper that came with my plastic cutlery. I would have given anything for some Cholula sauce. But again, it could have been worse right?
The boy’s grilled chicken lasagna was pretty decent. I had about two bites and was pleasantly surprised at how it wasn’t shredded chicken meat mixed up in a watered down tomato sauce, but there was actually a breaded chicken cutlet inside which served as its own layer. It might have even been breaded with Italian herbed breadcrumbs… it had what my mac n’ cheese lacked… FLAVOR. It only they could work in some of that breadcrumb into the mac n’ cheese casserole dish.
His nephew dug into his baked ziti and seemed to like it. If I had to judge it visually, it looked a little dry and the sauce looked weird. Lol.
The fries (of which I only had about 4 or 5) were really salty and oddly buttery. My boyfriend commented that they were very similar to Burger King’s fries. I haven’t eaten there in what feels like years, but I DO remember not being particularly fond of their fries (or their food I’m general) because there were way too salty.
Considering how lackluster our food was it was almost hurtful at how much everything was. My flavorless mac n’ cheese was $ 9, for a crappy serving and for something that I could have made better with a Kraft instant box. I had actually made homemade (not it of a box) mac n’ cheese the afternoon prior and it definitely kicked Cucina & Co.‘s butt. Maybe they should hire me on a consultancy basis, lol. The baked ziti and grilled chicken lasagna squares were pretty small and not dense enough to justify the size of it — also $ 9. I hate feeling like I was overcharged for something that’s subpar.
Also as I mentioned above, the kitchen staff was pretty friendly — the lady at the register was not. I mean she really couldn’t ring up my overpriced bland n’ cheese, I mean — mac n’ cheese on the right side? I seriously had to walk around — I’m not a tourist, but I feel bad for tourists that do come here because it’s such a poor reflection of NYC and embarrassingly so for being a part of the Rockefeller Center experience.
I’ll never be back here again if I can help it. In heading to the nearby restroom I came across a «Bill’s Burger» chain restaurant, really wish I would have known about it because I bet it’s eons better than this Cucina & Co. 2 stars and that’s cuz I valued the opportunity to not starve and stay warm in the seating atrium outside of this craphole.

Would have give zero star if Unilocal allows that. We sat down at the restaurant section for a quick lunch. I had a shrimp scampi pasta and it is the absolutely worst pasta i ever had in my life!
If you are hungry around this area, just go to mcdonalds or burger king and you will get much better food than here.

Why am I limping and why is my shirt funny?
Because I bought a bagel and coffee and it cost me an arm and a leg!
The food was fine, but kinda pricey.