My wife and I were on our way to another bar/restaurant in the Forum Shops when we walked past this place and made a mental note to come back and try it sometime. It just looked inviting.
Turns out we got our chance sooner than expected when our plans at the other restaurant did not go entirely as planned. We had show tickets at 7:30 and had sat at a table at the other place from 5:30 to 6:15 without getting served so much as drinks, so we politely took our leave and ran back to Carmine's. Could they possibly accommodate us and get us to the show on time with such short notice?
We were seated straight away with no wait. When we explained our situation to our server, Ryan, he had our cocktails out within 5 minutes. Once we'd decided on our dinner items he talked to his manager and they bumped up our service order and had our entrees out about 5 minutes after that. We couldn't believe it! When they brought it to us we actually said "that can't be ours".
Did getting it so quickly impact the quality of the dish at all? If it did, then they should be charging more, because everything was fantastic. For drinks I had the Espresso Martini which was just spot on and my wife had the Sicilian Mule, which was somehow actually even better. We ordered Angel Hair Pomodoro and Veal Saltimboca for our entrees, which was way too much food for two people, but we ate every last scrap of it anyway because it was amazing. Oh, and we ate most of the bread basket too because how else were we going to sop up all of that delicious sauce that the Veal Saltimbocca was covered in?
Head to toe, beginning to end, Carmine's impressed the heck out of us. Not only will we be back, we'll be back with friends.