Critic's Review
I changed my mind about going to a place further North in Pompano, so I decided to used my 15% off coupon for lunch here. This location has never been open for lunch previously; Carrabba's is now opening all of their location for lunch. Sister restaurant Bonefish is going down the tubes, so they're desperate to generate more venue for the chain.
Apparently the "Open for Lunch" word hasn't gotten out, because the parking lot was as empty at 2:30pm as it was when they weren't open for lunch. There were 2 tables occupied in the restaurant; tumbleweed blew threw the bar area.
The place is a bit dated; they keep the lights lower than before so you can't see that the furniture could use a coat of varnish. It's one big open room with an open kitchen. I was seated at a booth right next to the other occupied booth. Bookmark this for later.
My server was the bartender, since he had nothing else to do. He brought me an iced tea, and than another one after I'd taken like 2 sips from it. Very strange.
I wanted to try something different; I decided on the Tag Pic Pac, which is thin pasta with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. Can't go wrong with that, right? For dinner ($11.99) it comes with soup; for lunch ($7.69) it's $2. extra for the soup. Still a good haul for under $10.
Of course you get bread at Carrabba's.
The soup seems to be worse every time I get it. It's clearly made from scratch, because it's never the same. Today it had big chunks of sausage and too much of it; not a good balance of lentils. I like it best when it has more lentils and the sausage isn't in big man-chunks.
I'd taken 2 tastes of the soup and the entree arrived. Great, so I got 2 iced teas, bread, soup and my entree within 3 minutes of each other. Note to restaurant; this isn't good service. You can see all of the tables from the kitchen; there's no reason to deliver an entree seconds after the soup.
I can never get basil leaves to grow this big on my plants at home. Sigh. Meanwhile, the 3pm Dinner crowd started rolling in, and for some reason they were seating everyone in the same 30 square foot area. Why do restaurants do this? Do they think I want to have to hear the inane banter of 80yos in an Italian Chain restaurant. Are your servers unable to walk 30 feet to give your customers some PRIVACY?
Daughter scolding Mom for always ordering the same thing when they go out to dinner. Everyone has the same Mom; mine always ordered a Rob Roy and Filet of Sole. She got mad at my brother and me once when we took her to Ruth's Chris and she couldn't get Filet of Sole.
Anyway, the Tag Pic Pac was surprisingly lousy; the tomatoes were canned and the "sauce" just played like a bland tomato sauce. I'd expected something like Aglio e Olio with fresh tomatoes thrown in, but this was nothing like that. I couldn't really taste the olive oil or garlic, and the tomatoes didn't have that fresh taste. The pasta was fresh and very soft and of course they didn't salt the water; even with Romano cheese on it, the dish is a loser.
With the coupon, this came to just over $10, which is a good deal despite the bad food and service.
Conclusion
Carrabba's was my go-to place when I used to go back to visit Long Island; a comfortable bar, good wine by the glass and a few things on the menu that aren't bad, although I often just had bread and wine. This location is located in a geriatric area and blue hairs take over the bar, so it's not a place I could hang out.
I'm not sure what's happening with this chain, although I've never been crazy about the food here. They could at least make the experience better, by not piling 3 courses on the table at once and not bunching up 5 tables in an otherwise empty restaurant. I guess when you start cutting back on management, you just put yourself on a spiraling downward track.
Review 8/7/13
I attended a "Tasting" here, which is more a customer appreciation thing rather than any sort of media event. They sent links via email and had it on their facebook page; so it was just the sort of thing that good restaurants do to give you some incentive to follow them or to be on their mailing list. A description of the event is here.
This location is about the same as all of the original Carrabba's; not as fancy as Fort Lauderdale; the original model has a more casual feel with a big open kitchen, a bar area on the side and casual wood benches.
Rather than consider the tasting as a review of this location, you can get my impression of the dishes here.
Review 6/23/12
Carrabba's is a mid-end chain owned by the people who brought you Outback, catering to the middle income diner. They're opening a location in Fort Lauderdale on E 17th street in the space previously occupied by Taza Mediterranean.
The store in Pompano Beach is identical to the one on Long Island, which is part of the comfort factor of chains.
They have a nice by-the-glass wine list, and if you just come in for a drink they'll set you up with some warm bread and olive oil dip that is good enough by itself if you're not that hungry. Also, you can order wine by the glass or get a quartino, which they say is a glass and a half. A true quartino is 1/3 of a bottle, where a glass is supposedly 1/4th, so it's not really a glass and a half. But I think they give you 9oz, which is more than a quartino. It's priced exactly 50% more, so it's a matter of preference and not a deal of any kind.
On this visit they didn't quite finish cooking the bread; the crust was ok but it was too doughy. I didn't send it back; it is free after all, and once you dip it in the oil it's not that much different.
The food here is passable; certainly not fine italian restaurant quality, but not as bad as Olive garden. They have some wonky recipes, but their basic stuff is pretty good. The caesar salad, calamari, mussels, soups. all worthy snacks; note that you can get the mussels "marinara" instead of with the standard butter/wine sauce. Today I wanted to try the crab cakes. Since the bread wasn't particularly edible today, it was going to have to serve as my meal.
I'm always amused by the garnishes that chains come up with; a sprig of limp italian parsley. Does it really add anything to the dish?The cakes are moist with a lot of filler; red peppers and celery and probably bread. They're pretty low end as crabcakes go, but for $10.70 they're proportionally priced, considering that the high-end restaurants are charging $15 for 1 cake nowadays. The red pepper sauce was fine but I'd prefer a good tartar sauce. Not my favorite dish.
For dessert they have "bacino", which are mini-servings of treats like tiramisu and espresso creme. My advice is leave some of the entree for the dogs and have one of these.
Due to its reasonable pricing, this place draws crowds thursday thru Sat, so be prepared to wait, although on this Saturday night there were seats at the bar and no wait at peak dinner hours.