Carmine’s Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria

Love Carmine’s!!! Everything is fresh and homemade! Their manicotti just melts in your mouth! Their blue cheese dressing is some of the best I’ve had. Bread is always fresh and delicious. The staff is friendly. When we want Italian its Carmine’s us! Yum!

Let me preface this review by saying that I love Carmine’s; however if this was my first time visiting I would’ve definitely given only 1 or 2 stars. Anyway, the restaurant is off of Jonestown road in a shopping center. The décor is very old school. There’s not a lot of seating, but that’s okay because it’s a best kept secret.
Now for the food:
We started off with a caprese salad. It’s always good. I ordered the lamb that was on special for Valentine’s day, my husband had the chicken lasagna and my daughter had the manicotti. All were quite good.
I dont know if our server was having an off night or if he was stoned, but here’s some of the things that peeved us. When my daughter ordered the manicotti, he rang her up for the adult size, luckily my husband caught it in time to change it but not before he brought out the house salad that was the about the same cost of the kid’s meal. My husband’s salad came out way later than ours and when he got it there was a used straw in it. The server didn’t even apologize. He said he was lucky to even get that one. Uhmmm ok. Also, I asked for my lamb to be cooked medium. I stressed to the server that he could undercook it but please don’t overcook it. It came out well done. My sweet husband let his food get cold, while he waited on me to get mine.
Overall, the food is always delicious and the service is normally pretty good. Last night was definitely an anomaly.

This was our first visit to Carmine’s and we will be back! This restaurant is in the New Town plaza right off of 421. I have driven by quite a few times and never really noticed it before. The interior is a pretty good size so you don’t really have to worry about a wait. Our waitress was very friendly and our waters always remained filled.
As an appetizer we got the fried mozzarella in a pink vodka sauce. Can you really go wrong when those are the base ingredients? My thought is no. For dinner my go to is eggplant parmesan, I just love the stuff. Carmine’s did not disappoint! It was eggplant, cheesy, sauce deliciousness. The portions are a good size, and I had plenty of leftovers. You also get a soup or salad with your main entrée which I am a fan of. I am much more a soup person than a salad one. Desserts looked promising, they have that same limoncello cake that every pizza/​Italian place has, but also looked like they had a house made tiramisu.