As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I had the opportunity to attend the Carrabba’s Italian Grill Tastemaker Event on Saturday at the Carrabba’s in Huntersville, NC. As an Italian girl, I am very picky about Italian food. Rarely do I go out to eat Italian as I can make it at home and in my mind, get a better value. But that doesn’t apply to Carrabba’s. I tried Carrabba’s for the first time about five or six years ago and absolutely loved it. It was real Italian food and not the fake stuff like some other chain, Italian restaurants. Who knew an Italian chain restaurant could be so good and well, authentic? Well as authentic as I can imagine as I haven’t been to Italy….yet but still, good Italian food.
I am the kind of person when I go to a restaurant, I will try something different each time until I find that one dish that makes me happy and warm on the inside. At Carrabba’s, that dish is the Chicken Bryan topped with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes with a basil lemon butter sauce (I am salivating just by typing it out the description)
I never peruse the menu when I go there because I already know what I am going to get so when I arrived at the Tastemaker Event today, I was in for a world of schooling on the Carrabba’s way. We also got to bring a guest so I brought along one of my girl friends and we were ready for some Italian food!
Marci, Proprietor
Mike, our host for the day with his wife Sarah-who also works for Carrabba’s. It was nice to hear that everyone who spoke today had been with the company for 10+ years. In my mind, they must be doing something right as a business for people to be there that long and be passionate about what they do.
The first thing he went over was their pesto sauce, which is surprisingly simple to make. Along with pine nuts, they use walnuts in their pesto sauce and use genevese basil as the base. Just watching him pour extra virgin olive oil for ten or eleven seconds proved to me that I have been making mind incorrectly all along. I haven’t been using that much extra virgin olive oil and always put the cheese in along with everything else while the cheese was the last thing he added. I also need a huge food processor like that, it is officially on my wish list!
The pesto was served with a Tomato Caprese Salad
Everything on the plate was completely fresh and the mozzarella had a mild yet rich taste. This salad didn’t need anything else to satisfy since it’s the perfect summer salad. Did you know that mozzarella is made from milk of water buffalos?
The next dish we got to taste was the Linguine Pescatore with shrimp, sea scallops, mussels in a spicy marina.
This was excellent, the marinara had a bite to it and the seafood was fresh. I only ate half of it but boxed up the rest to take home with me 🙂
Next up was showing us how they made the Penne Franco -Penne with Mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts and black olives, with ricotta salata
The key players
Thin strips of the ricotta salata to try. I am not a hufe fan of the ricotta mostly because of the texture but this was fantastic. It was salty and smooth and a complete 180 texture wise from the ricotta I’ve had in the past.
We had a choice of pastas to take home with us and I chose this one but here is a picture of the finished product
One last course to go after that and that would be dessert. They made the Dessert Rosa-a simple dessert of butter cake, slices of strawberries and bananas, crushed pineapple, vanilla pudding topped with chocolate and Cool Whip served in a shot glass. These would be perfect for a summer get together!
The last thing we did was play with pizza dough. Mike asked if there were any volunteers to try it out so of course I volunteered along with one other.
Ok, so even though I worked at Papa John’s when I was in high school and my Italian background did not help one bit with this. I couldn’t the dough in a round shape at all and it was more oblong that anything. At least it didn’t look like a state or some other funky shape like in the past
I even got a $20 gift certificate for participating in the dough piece!
Our goodie bags to take home with us
I’ve never seen extra olive oil in a packet before, this made me smile!
Herbs and pine nuts
A huge bowl of olives. This right here is dangerous for me b/c I can’t keep olives at home without going through the entire jar. I am going to try to keep my paws away from these but will be seeing them in some meals in the near future!
Some things I learned about Carrabb’s today that made me love them even more:
*Carrabba’s along with Outback has been feeding troops in the Middle East for the past few years.
*They don’t advertise that they do this which is awesome since they aren’t doing it just for show, they are doing it for those who serve and protect our country
*Many of the dishes are those of Grandma Mandola and to this day, still true to the original recipe
*By watching them make their sauces and dishes, they use simple, fresh ingredients. When I go out to eat, I feel like I could never make that dish at home but that wasn’t the case today. I feel like I could make the stuff they make easily at home . Ok, it may not taste as good but it is possible and they don’t use ingredients or spices that I’ve never heard of.
*The first Carrabba’s was in Houston, TX. It’s nice to see a great, Italian restaurant from somewhere other than NY or NJ.
*The food is based on Sicilian recipes, which is probably why I enjoyed their food so much since my family hails from Sicily.
All in all, I had an excellent time at the Tastemaker Event. I loved learning about the Carrabba’s way and culture, their ingredients and processes and learning new fun facts.
Thanks Foodbuzz and Carrabba’s for hosting this!! The staff was more than knowledgeable and hospitable, welcomed us with open arms and was happy to answer questions. I truly enjoyed the experience and will be visiting Carrabba’s again for sure!
Simply Shaka 