{"id":905,"date":"2011-01-06T17:09:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-06T23:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/?p=905"},"modified":"2011-01-06T17:09:29","modified_gmt":"2011-01-06T23:09:29","slug":"carinos-italian-kitchen-in-little-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/italian-cuisine\/carinos-italian-kitchen-in-little-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Carino’s Italian Kitchen in Little Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com<\/h4>\n
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Baked Stuffed Mushrooms<\/p><\/div>\n

How do you celebrate a birthday?\u00a0 Why, with a family feast of Italian food of course!\u00a0 In my family that\u2019s how it\u2019s normally done at least and history repeated itself last month for my step-father\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 My mother, step-father, wife, and son (the oldest was away at college) all met at Carino\u2019s Italian Kitchen<\/a> in Little Rock for good company, good food, and good times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a very cold night by Arkansas standards (19 degrees) so we rushed inside upon arrival.\u00a0 Carino\u2019s Italian Kitchen is a chain restaurant and is not someplace I would typically eat at but my family likes it and I\u2019ve had good experiences there in the past.\u00a0 The rest of our party was waiting for us and we were seated immediately in the middle-front of the restaurant, surrounded by tables and booths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carino\u2019s has a dark-wood d\u00e9cor with an open architecture where you can see the entire restaurant and the open kitchen in the back.\u00a0 It feels very casual and open but also has a welcoming quality to it.\u00a0 I enjoy the ability to watch the kitchen in action and you can sit close to it for a better view if you want.\u00a0 It also feels like a chain, which can be a problem if you are looking for an intimate dinner.\u00a0 Given our festive situation though, the atmosphere wasn\u2019t a concern.<\/p>\n

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Fried Mozzarella <\/p><\/div>\n

Our waiter arrived quickly and was very friendly in taking our orders.\u00a0 We ordered the fried mozzarella ($6.99)<\/strong> and the stuffed mushrooms ($7.99)<\/strong> for appetizers and I opted for the braised short-ribs with pasta ($15.99)<\/strong> for my entr\u00e9e.<\/p>\n

The appetizers came out relatively quickly and looked as expected.\u00a0 The stuffed mushrooms were packed nicely with spinach, parmesan, onions, garlic, and were baked in a flavorful lemon basil cream sauce.\u00a0 One of them was cold in the center but they weren\u2019t molten hot on the outside.\u00a0 This tells me that they were baked and not micro-waved but were just not baked long enough.\u00a0 Overall the mushrooms were very tasty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mozzarella sticks had a decent marinara sauce to dip them in but were over-fried and heavy.\u00a0 I realize that mozzarella sticks by definition are not light but for this appetizer you could only taste the fried batter and not much else.\u00a0 They may be decent for kids as my son liked them quite a bit.<\/p>\n

We were all having a good time talking about family, friends, and other stuff but started to notice those around us leaving and being replaced by new tables.\u00a0 How could this be?\u00a0 People who showed up after us had received their food, eaten, left, and been replaced by new people.\u00a0 Over an hour had passed since our appetizers first arrived so we summoned our waiter to find out what was going on.\u00a0 That is, we summoned him after we finally located him.\u00a0 Something had gone obviously wrong in the kitchen, with or order, or both, but they resolved the issue and our food finally arrived.<\/p>\n

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Braised Short Ribs<\/p><\/div>\n

My braised short ribs were boneless as promised and topped with julienned sun-dried tomatoes, parmesan, and spices.\u00a0 I attempted to cut into the first piece of beef with my fork but it stubbornly bounced back.\u00a0 Typically braised meat will fall apart but that was not the case here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Undeterred I broke out my knife and cut into the meat, or tried to at least.\u00a0 It was rubbery to cut into as well and resisted my attempts until I added a lot of pressure.\u00a0 I finally sawed through the meat and tried a bite.\u00a0 Mmm, it tasted very good which was surprising.\u00a0 Given how tough it was I didn\u2019t think it would taste good but it did!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Someone created a decent recipe but the cooks had failed to deliver on the execution.\u00a0 If the meat had been braised for 3-4 hours I think it would have been great.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they didn\u2019t cook it enough and it suffered as a result.\u00a0 You can also see in the photo I took large pieces of fat present.\u00a0 In a proper braising the fat would have rendered out leaving nothing but tasty meat.\u00a0 Ah well, it did taste very good at least!<\/p>\n

Overall it was a fun celebration and I really enjoyed the company.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say the same about the food but am willing to give it another chance down the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

W. Little Rock
\n11600 Pleasant Ridge Rd.
\nLittle Rock, AR\u00a0 72223<\/p>\n

Phone: 501-225-3434
\nCatering: 1-877-PASTA-411
\nFax: 501-225-3545
\nCurbside: 501-225-3212<\/p>\n

\"Carino's<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com How do you celebrate a birthday?\u00a0 Why, with a family feast of Italian food of course!\u00a0 In my family that\u2019s how it\u2019s normally done at least and history repeated itself last month for my step-father\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 My mother, step-father, wife, and son (the oldest was away at college) all met […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,4,205],"tags":[346,325,13,313,112,347,16,72,131],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-italian-cuisine","category-reviews","tag-braised","tag-carino","tag-italian","tag-kitchen","tag-little","tag-mozzarella","tag-pasta","tag-restaurant","tag-rock"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":970,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions\/970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}