Carrabba’s Italian Grill

Good food. Very friendly wait staff. It was very busy on Sunday night, but no wait. Even with the crowd the waiter was frequently checking on us. I will be coming back again to try other dishes on the menu.

Visited this restaurant for the first time on Sunday, Jan 10, 2016. I had soup and salad and hubby had the Tucson Grilled Sirloin with asparagus as the veggie. Yuckie!!!, No potatoes or other veggie. The sirloin portion was so small it was gone in under 5 minutes There are no refills on the soup or salad like it is at Olive Garden. Was not impressed with the menu or food. Probably will not go back or recommend to a friend. Will give an A-​OK on rating because the waitress customer service good.

I love this place but it is crowed-​quite a wait on weekends. Great food, service and wine so what can you expect?

Services Sucks… Even talked to a manger and got no were SMH… Is the food good? YES

I have lived in Waldorf for 3 years and this was our first time visiting. From reading the reviews I was unsure. I will say we were pleased and enjoyed our dinner. We had a nice bottle of wine for only $ 26, my husband enjoyed his sirloin. The steak was nicely cooked and flavorful. I had the chicken Marsala with fresh green beans I thought it was really good no complaints. My son loves Mac and cheese and although they didn’t have any on the menu they made a special one for him. He cleaned his plate. The service was also great and the food come out quick. We will good back again. Based on our experience I would recommend to others.

Our family loves this restaurant since we first ate one of their first outpost in British Columbia Whistler mountain in the early Nineties. We are so glad when they opened in Waldorf.
We go here every couple of weeks. Lentil and sausage soup is spicy and fantastic, as is the spicy chicken soup.
My 12 yo son loves the house Caesars salad and it is one for that he will eat all of it every time with his grilled salmon entre.
I like their Sangrias, calamari, filet of beef/​pork chops/​or chicken with Marsala mushroom sauce, shrimp and scallop Linguini with Vodka cream sauce. I also love their side of young green beans, perfectly sautéed and seasoned.
Their pana cotta, Rosa cake and Tiramisu cakes are our favorite deserts also.

New open décor since last I was here. Visited on Easter Sunday and it was surprisingly quiet with only half full restaurant.
Our waiter was a little on the slow side to put it mildly. No bread, no plates for the shared appetizers, slow drink refill. Eventually brought the plates with olive oil but the bread was gone by then. Received mussels appetizer and no bread.
Food was remarkably mediocre with fairly small portions. My fish was cooked nice enough but the artichoke topping was ice cold and I got half a sundried tomato — which was very good incidentally. Asparagus side dish was a disaster — please remove the tough bottoms of the asparagus before cooking — or at least before serving. Lobster ravioli was decent.
Skip desert and coffee, it was not good. Had a cappuccino and the John Cole. Cappuccino was cold and flavorless — the espresso must be old. The vanilla ice cream had chunks of ice like it was freezer burn and the caramel sauce tastes nothing which matched the ice cream well. The pecans were pretty tasty though but I’m sure they came out of a jar.
Not sure what happened to the food at this place, it used to be better. I’m agreeing with other commenters that Cracker Barrel next door is a better option.

Cracker Barrel had a long wait. That’s the only reason I can think that anyone would come into this place. I’ll admit Cracker Barrel and Carraba’s aren’t substitutes, but I figured it was kinda like Olive Garden and Olive Garden has unlimited breadsticks right? Wrong. They don’t have breadsticks. They don’t even have bread. And worse still they don’t have COFFEE. Perhaps it is the caffeine withdrawal, but I’ve never felt so much rage toward an empty restaurant. The odor of cleaning fluids and olive oil immediate crawled up my nose upon entering through the doors. In case you’ve never experienced that, it’s not a pleasant smell. But let me return to the fact that they ran out of coffee. How do you run out of coffee? And then no bread? WTF kind of restaurant doesn’t give you free bread? Plus the prices are outrageous. I hate this place. I hate it so much. Not even the most mouthgasmic baked ravioli will change my mind.

Best Italian food in the area. Hands down. Always fresh ingredients w/​bold flavored & fresh herbs. No dish has ever disappointed!

Had lunch there today. We started with calamari and mussels. Mussels were pretty good while the calamari was fried very hard and extremely salty. We chalked it to a bad batch.
For entrees we had chicken marsala, speidino di Marie and baked ravioli. Honestly it should be very hard to mess up shrimp but they did. The chicken marsala was edible but not appetizing. The Ravioli was the best of the 3 selections.
Service was good and it should have been because there were only 10 patrons in the place.
It’s been a very long time since we dined there. Looks like we will wait some more.

The food was flavorful and seasoned well. Amy was very attentive and accommodating. We sat at the bar area with no waiting. For starters we had the warm crusty bread wirh herb flavored olive oil and the calamari. It was heavily seasoned with salt and pepper. The sausage and lentil soup was delish. The new entrée ciopinno has shrimp, mussels, clams, bay scallops and haddock (white fish). The hubs had the fettuccine carrabba which is chicken, mushroom and peas. We were too full to have dessert.

Had lunch here on a Friday afternoon. I thought the service and food were good, not great, but I would definitely return here again. When we got there, it wasn’t busy but the hostess needed time to clear a table and then didn’t seat us there. She asked if we minded sitting at a high top table. We didn’t mind so we went ahead and sat there. I wasn’t quite sure why we weren’t seated at any of the open booths/​tables not in the bar area, but it didn’t matter much to me. Overall, it was a good experience.

It performs as advertised. Not terribly authentic but solid Americanized Italian pastas and chicken dishes. It had a nice Monday dinner with cheap entrees that include an appetizer or dessert.
Calamari appetizer was awesome, just right amount of salt, hot and tasted fresh. Bread is good too, served with herbs and olive oil (ask for balsamic vinegar).
Ordered their signature Alfredo chicken pasta, served with side salad, mushrooms and peas. It was good, but with a smaller serving of chicken for the price. And the pasta and sauce felt thick and paste-​y.
Overall you know what you’re getting into and it tastes just fine. On a side note their ice tea was very good.

I had the Fettuccine Wessie & loved it!!! That garlicky, lemony sauce was DELISH!!! Our server was nice & so were the hostesses. I’m a little disappointed with the $ 10 off coupon on Unilocal.When you click on it, it takes you to another website & says the coupon is no longer valid.

My better half and I dined here for the first time this past weekend. I really didn’t have my hopes up for anything too special because of what I had heard thruogh word-​of-​mouth. Honestly, the only reason we gave it a try was because it was literally in the parking lot of the hotel we were staying at.
Upon arrival, we were seated immediately (and this was a Friday early evening.) The interior is a mix of traditional, cliché italian décor (i.e. jars of pasta, grapes, peppers, etc) and some modern elements — like the kitchen view. there is an entire wall dedicated to viewing the kitchen and all the cooks. I thought it was a nice touch — the cooks were in the background, grilling, and flames were flying — it gave it a nice atmosphere.
Our server was very friendly and down-to-earth…she acted like she was just everybody’s best friend — in a good way… not annoyingly. She even told me the harsh truth about a dish that I originally ordered… it was the Shrimp Risotto. She came right out and said, «honestly…if you like a lot of tomato flavor, you’ll love this dish… but I’ve had plenty of customers tell me they don’t like it because it’s too much tomato.» I subsequently ordered a Mahi/​artichoke dish — which turned out to be quite fabulous and seasoned deliciously! My guy had the Lobster Ravioli and he loved it. At first, he was worried the portion wasn’t sizeable enough… but his full stomach at the end seemed to shut him up ;) We also got drinks with our meals (alcoholic)…in the end our total only came to around $ 50…so it was very reasonably priced for the quality of the food and service.
Oh! And the bread!!! The bread was superb!!! It was hot and fresh and came with plenty of dipping oil. Mmmmm I’m getting hungry…

Went to Carrabas for dinner last night to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. We got there about 4:45 and we were seated right away. Wasn’t very busy so things went smoothly as far as ordering our drinks, appetizers and dinner. The menu has changed since we were here in March and so have the prices. I noticed that most of the items that remained on the menu had a $ 2 – 3 price increase which to me is a lot. But you already know if you go to dinner here its going to be expensive and higher prices are to be expected. Our meal for 3 entrées, an appitizer and two regular drinks (I had water) was $ 76. However the food was wonderful! We had the mussels for the appetizer because it’s my daughters favorite. They were very good. For dinner my daughter had the chicken bryan, I had the trio and my boyfriend had the Johnny. Food was just as wonderful as it always is! I did notice that once it got to be 5:30 more and more people came in and our service slowed a bit. It took 15 minutes for my daughter to get her complimentary ice cream and another 10 – 15 minutes to get our check and to go box. So I do see where other reviews stated the service starts to lack the busier it gets. Overall we had a nice meal and enjoyed celebrating my daughter’s birthday. We always enjoy Carrabas and will be back again soon :-)

Giving two stars is being extremely nice.
Both the service, food and food wait time has gotten worse and worse since they first opened.
Food is bland. Wait time for food is ridiculous. The service is absolutely incompetent. The floor manager is the most rude, obnoxious, egotistical employee there.
The food they serve is not worth half the price it costs.
Headquarters, nor the general manager, care at all about their customers. So complaints are utterly ignored.
This restaurant is way too overpriced for their food, incompetence and dining experience.

Why I might not return to Carrabbas in Waldorf? We are big fans of this restaurant. The food is always consistent and the service, although hit or miss, is never terrible. However on November 2^nd our experience was so unpleasant that we actually walked out.
We had call ahead seating for 7:20. When we arrived the restaurant was so crowded that we had to wait outside in the cold until we could literally push our way inside and give the hostess our name. She informed us the wait would be about 20 minutes, which is about what we expected. We got our buzzer and mad e our way to the bar to get a drink. It was hard to find a place but we did eventually find some standing room. For about 10 minutes there was only one bartender more concerned with organizing the wine then taking our order. We tried several times to get her attention however it seemed she was purposely trying to avoid making any eye contact with us. As a former bartender this baffled me because I’m assuming that most of her earnings are coming from bar tips, so why would she purposely ignore the people waiting to be served ?
After being shooed out of the way by several servers we snuck up even closer to the bar. Another bartender showed up and starting pouring drinks for the service bar and avoiding eye contact with her customers. We waited at the bar for about a total of 15 minutes before we decided to call it quits. We were already very irritated and had the feeling it would only get worse. We walked up to the hostess, gave her back the buzzer and walked out.
Sadly this isn’t the first bad experience we’ve had at the bar while waiting to be sat. In the future we will probably reconsider going to Carrabbas on a weekend night because of this experience. This type of service is unacceptable to us and we took our business to another restaurant in Waldorf in which we actually felt like valued patrons. We don’t think that is too much to ask for when eating out.
Follow up: I sent this message to Carrabba’s headquarters on November 2^nd. I never heard a single word back. It shows me they don’t care about their customers.

My friend picked this place. yeh, blame him, lol. I was open to the idea since I would always see the commercials, but I really wanted to go to my favorite chain, macaroni grill.
Being my first time, I tried a drink, the bread, entrée AND dessert:
Southern peach tea– decent, too much ice
Bread and oil– bread was warm and good. The herbs in the oil did nothing for flavor… i added salt and pepper, it helped
Soup with entrée– minestrone soup was blah and that was just soup. I’ve never felt that way about my minestrone soup
Entrée of lobster ravioli-​this food appeared to have come out of a bag, no real sauce, cookie cutter ravioli with lobster paste inside; highly disappointed ($ 18)
Tiramisu dessert– pretty, rich and thick. The cream on top was so thick and stiff! Didn’t have to be a bad thing, but it didn’t gel with the rest of the dessert. The desert was also missing its soak from espresso or coffee like liquid (Sorry, I’m not an Italian food expert, but this is standard Italian fare where you shouldn’t be able to go wrong.) I left half of the dessert on the plate.
Even after all the disappointment, I wanted to end the night with the blackberry sangria. Very good and best thing I had the entire night. Very sweet and only had about two blackberries and two fresh slices of lemon that they added after.
Service was good, ambiance was nice… the food was bad. Even my friend’s food looked like there was alot left to be desired.
I like olive garden and macaroni grill much better than carabbas! Both places, I’ve gone and spent less money for two people. I feel like I need to make a trip to MG just to redeem chain restaurant Italian food :(

I have been here a few times and it got better, but not enough to make it my usual spot.
The food is more authentic and fresher than Olive Garden– nice pieces of herbs, seasoning and garlic that I can actually see and it is not doused in cheese like Olive Garden.
Atmosphere is dark and I sat at a booth and had plenty of space. Our servers are always helpful and possibly a little too «hovery», but still pleasant so it is fine.
The menu could use some help in terms of pairing and selection, but it was cooked nicely. Of course if you want something more authentic as far as Italian food– Waldorf MD or a national chain is NOT the place you will find it.

OMGeezy! The bread! The bread! DA BREAD!
Epic bread basket.
Solid chain restaurant with good ambiance.

I’ve been to this place about 3 times now. I tend to go for the non-​chain Italian places, but for what it is, Carrabbas is a good option.
The complimentary herbs and olive oil mixture for the bread is very tasty. The service is great, if not overly attentive, and the food is good, again, for what it is.
It’s not the first place I’ll go to for Italian, but it’s decent quality and I never leave there disappointed. I really wish they’d out the dimmer on the lights up a bit. It was pretty darn dark in there for about 6PM!