Carrabba's Italian Grill Melbourne

Great food and service- would have been 5 stars but my husbands New! Champagne Pasta with Shrimp did NOT have one ingredient that he was looking forward to- Linguine tossed with shrimp in a champagne cream sauce with roasted red bell peppers and sautéed mushrooms.. It Had Not One Mushroom! He is a Mushroom lover so was a bit disappointing. Hopefully the kitchen realizes what is supposed to be in this advertised dish. Otherwise we still highly recommend! Service was Great and will be back!

Carrabbas is a place I've been visiting all over the south for over 20 years. Has it been hit or miss? Not really. They are usually pretty spot on with service and quality taste... however. Our server was attentive... TOO attentive. He came by every 3 minutes to check on us. It was great... at first. The second we got our meal and we are enjoying our wine he tried to get our phone number to look up our account. My mouth was full of food... not the best time. This is something that should be handled before or after the meal. NOT during! My husband and I got frustrated and asked if we could please enjoy our meal first. He left but still came every 3 minutes to check on us. It became obnoxious. I believe he was making up for forgetting to put in our appetizer, which came out with our meal due to being reminded and the meal order was already put in. Based on the food this should be a 5 star review, but the service was too invasive and mistakes were made. My husband ordered the upgraded steak medium rare, I had the smaller less thick cut rare. Our steaks were cooked at the others preference. Very disappointing for my husband as he was hungry and the one paying the bill. So my husband got a smaller steak due to yet another error on the servers end while I got the big one which made me feel guilty. On top of the mussels being forgotten and the waiter being past annoying we didn't complain. We knew it would only cause a bigger amount of attention that we did not want on our rare date night together.

Service was ok, though a touch slow. Seemed to be more of a kitchen issue than waitstaff. Flavor of the food was good, as I would expect. The steak marsala was so chewy it was difficult to eat. Not sure what cut it is supposed to be, but was not pleasant. The Chicken Bryan was good, though the size looked more like Squab Bryan. I've never seen a chicken breast that small. The mezzaluna was tasty and well cooked.

I had never been to Carrabba's before but I'm not opposed to chain Italian restaurants (Olive Garden is my guilty pleasure! so I decided to try it. Unfortunately I did not enjoy the food. The bread and oil was decent, but the fettuccine was extremely bland and dry (see photo and the red sauce on the Spaghetti was overly chunky and bitter. The staff was nice but overall if you're looking for good Italian food, I'd go to Amici's which is practically next door.

The best restaurant ever. Eat sooo good. Server fantastic. It was my birthday. The staff sang happy birthday. It was the best night. Loved. So delish.