Carrabba’s Italian Grill

We are one day late with this week’s Dining with Dad due to Alex having a sleepover on Friday night. So that pushed us back to today as there’s no chance we’d skip it! I asked Chloe earlier in the week what type of food she was in the mood for this week and she chose Italian. Therefore this week we headed up to Polaris to Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

We arrived a little early, getting there at 4:45pm. The good news about that was that we were instantly seated since it wasn’t a full restaurant yet. Unfortunately we didn’t get the best server. It took about 10 minutes before she visited our table and that was just to say she’d be back. After 15 min in, she finally arrived to take our drink orders and since we had plenty of time to review the menu, we went ahead and placed our food order at the same time. Another 5 minutes later we finally got our drinks and she brought the complimentary bread and herb plate to mix with the olive oil on the table. Obviously when you’re sitting there for 20 minutes before being served your drinks it’s not a good experience.

Chloe went for the classic spaghetti and meatball. Obviously she made sure to ask for no cheese! She said it was very good and ate every bite of it so it obviously was good. That was even after eating half a loaf of bread with the olive oil. I love the coloring she was able to do on the flowers on the kids menu that sits under her plate. She had plenty of time to do a-lot of shading!

Alex took the longest to figure out what he wanted. He finally decided on the Fettuccini Carrabba. Unfortunately he left off some of the good stuff in asking for no mushrooms or peas. He “substituted” the salad that comes with it and got the fries. The server said there might be an “upcharge” to do so. The salad has a menu price of $4.99 and the fries are also $4.99 so not sure why that’s necessary but ok, maybe the’ll charge us a dollar. Nope. She charged us the entire $4.99 for the fries. Adding insult to injury, when I got my salad, Alex kept stealing bites and said he wished he’d gotten the salad. He only ate maybe 1 or 2 fries.

The saving grace of this meal was the quality of the food. I ordered the Chicken Marsala with a side of asparagus. The chicken had a nice char flavor on it and was still juicy as it should be. The marsala sauce and mushrooms were delicious. The grilled asparagus was also great, especially with a little table side shredded parmesan on top!

The food was definitely great so don’t let my experience turn you off too much. If you want some good Italian food, Carrabba’s is an excellent choice. It will probably be a long while for me to go back just because the experience wasn’t a pleasant one. And there’s so many other Italian places to visit in Columbus as well. We’ll shake this one off and I’m sure the next Dining with Dad will be excellent all around.