Wonderfully Simple Family Restaurant
Written: Jan 03 '04
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Pros: Great food in HUGE portions, friendly waiters and waitresses, large menu
Cons: Can be hard to decide what to order since the food is served family style.
The Bottom Line: Great restaurant with excellent food and excellent service. Definitely one of the best!
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| Horizons832's Full Review: Carmine's - Upper West Side |
Even though I live right across from New York City and am there an awful lot, I have never tried Carmine's. I love Italian food and was searching for a place that offered simple southern Italian-style food, well I found just that at Carmine's!
Atmosphere
The first thing you notice about a restaurant is the atmosphere so it can make a big impression on what you think of the place. Initially Carmine's appears small, but once you get seated you'll notice that it is a rather large place. There is a bar in the front and tables for when the wait gets long. Inside there is plenty of room to move around, but there is still a lot of tables. The restaurant looked like an old warehouse (which is a good thing), so it was nice but not too formal.
Service
We came to Carmine's for lunch around 2PM and there was no wait. When we left a little after 3PM there was still no wait and plenty of empty tables. From what I've heard both on this site and elsewhere is that the wait times can become insane. I was expecting the worst but was happy to see that there was no wait and we were seated immediately.
The waitress we had was very pleasant. She took the time to explain how the food is ordered (see below) and was very knowledgeable about the menu. She came back several times to ask if everything was good, and also responded quickly to our requests for more drinks, bread, etc. I was very happy with the service and would say that it was definitely one of the positive points of the experience.
Menu and Prices
The food at Carmine's is southern Italian, so expect a lot of your basic things like veal and chicken, spaghetti, ravioli, lasagna, and things like that. However, there was a lot of other food on the menu as well. I'd say that this was one of the best menus I've seen anywhere: they definitely have something for everyone's taste.
There is a special lunch menu (which is available until 3PM) that offers half sized portions of some of your more basic items (like salad and spaghetti) and also has individual sandwiches. The full dinner menu is always available though.
The prices are pretty high, but when you consider that you can feed 3 or 4 people with one dish they are very reasonable. For example, the spaghetti and meatballs is $20.00 but can serve at least four people! I would say that the prices are very reasonable.
Food
The food at Carmine's is served family style, which means that the portions are very large! Even the lunch sized spaghetti with meatballs that we ordered (which is a half-size portion) was large enough for the three of us to have 2 bowls each! We also ordered some things from the dinner menu and couldn't believe how large they were. The problem with this is that you need to agree on what to order, you definitely can't order one thing for each person!
The quality of the food was superb. The marinara sauce was the best I've ever had, and when the garlic bread goes by your table you will want to get up and take a bite of it! The one thing that I noticed is that they seem to love two ingredients: garlic and cheese. Everything had garlic in it, even the salad had large chunks of garlic in it. If you don't like the taste of garlic too much, you should be careful what you order. Personally, I like the flavor of garlic but didn't find it to be overpowering, although it was almost to that point.
Overall
Overall, this ranks right up there now as one of my favorite restaurants. The food was the best I've had in a long time and the service was great. I think it is best to come with a large group though so you can order a few things and split them more easily.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: Yes
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Visit during lunch if you don''t want to wait, be careful what you order if you don''t like garlic.
Best Suited For: Large Group
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Epinions.com ID:
Horizons832
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Member: J D
Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
I like trains
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