Review: Festa di Carrabba Offers Three Delicious Courses

Johnny Carrabba's Italian Grill debuted a delicious new menu for the new year and I was fortunate enough to enjoy a complimentary sampling at the Dallas location. (The plating for the sampling event isn't the same as the regular menu presentation.) The Festa di Carrabba includes three courses for $15 or $18, depending on your entree preference. The meal includes a small app or dessert, soup or salad, and an entree. 

Best of Festa di Carrabba: Champagne Shrimp and Scallops Linguine
The Festa di Carrabba menu offers a good variety of options with beef, seafood, and chicken entrees, but the Champagne Shrimp and Scallops Linguine became a clear favorite. It included pan-seared shrimp and scallops with mushrooms and roasted red peppers tossed with linguine in a champagne cream sauce. What makes this dish so tasty? Perfectly-cooked seafood builds on the layers of flavor created by the roasted red peppers, mushrooms, and subtle sauce. I especially liked that the shrimp, scallops, red peppers, and mushrooms were roughly the same size.

The Parmesan-Crusted Chicken and Potato-Crusted Haddock are tied for a close second to the Champagne Shrimp and Scallops.The Parm-Crusted Chicken is a sauteed chicken breast coated with freshly grated parmesan cheese and housemade breadcrumbs.It may sound simple, but this entree was well-seasoned and has the perfect texture. Although the coating was crisp throughout, the chicken was not dry or tough. A pale orange sauce and diced tomatoes topped the chicken. It gave the chicken a nice boost of creaminess and spice, but I preferred it with the grilled lemon.

Potato-Crusted Haddock? The menu described this as "flaky whitefish with a crispy potato coating, cooked to golden brown perfection and topped with our light mustard cream sauce and fresh diced tomatoes." It was more like hashbrown-coated fish.The light flavor of the fish was prominent and crisp bits of potato shreds occasionally peeked through.

Worst of Festa di Carrabba: Lobster Mac & Cheese
With so many fantastic alternatives available, I would never order or recommend the Lobster Mac & Cheese. I don't have a strict expectation for mac & cheese since the phrase can refer to everything from a bland food for toddlers to fluorescent pasta from a cardboard box to a high-calorie casserole too precious for anyone but Granny to prepare. Cavatappi corkscrew pasta with lobster, pancetta and four cheeses, topped with toasted breadcrumbs sounded like a perfection variant, but this dish was a disappointment.

I expected the dish to skimp on the lobster, but it had plentiful chunks of lobster. Instead, the cheese and breadcrumbs were the problem. Melted cheese sort of globbed on some of the pasta while a thin sauce puddled at the bottom of the dish. The breadcrumb topping was nice and crisp, but it sometimes added an unpleasant grittiness instead of a crunch.

To be fair, this may have been a minor snafu due to the demands of a new menu and dining area full of vocal taste testers. Regardless, it isn't worth the gamble when the menu includes many proven dishes.

Don't Miss the Chocolate Finale
Here's the menu description for the Sogno Di Cioccolata, "Truly a chocolate lover’s dream. Indulge in our Sogno Di Cioccolata, a rich fudge brownie topped with chocolate mousse, fresh whipped cream and homemade chocolate sauce. We make both the chocolate mousse and whipped cream in-house, which makes for an irresistibly fresh combination in this dreamy dessert. It’s the perfect way to end a meal."

Carrabba's pic shows the layers.

I expected it to be an over-the-top sugar bomb without much taste, but the flavor lived up to the menu's amazing description! The mousse and whipped cream were airy, yet substantial enough to match the fudge brownie layers. It had a well-balanced sweetness that didn't leave me reaching for a cup of black coffee to quell the sugar attack.

Many thanks to Carrabba's on Dallas Parkway for the warm hospitality and a delicious experience!