Carrabas

For over 30 years, Carrabba’s has been Houston’s true neighborhood restaurant. Family owned and operated, The Original Carrabba’s on Kirby Drive opened on Dec. 26, 1986, with $500 in the cash register (a loan from Mr. C, Johnny’s dad), 94 seats, seven barstools, and a menu whose most expensive item was a $9.95 T-bone steak and a glass of the best wine came in at a whopping $2.25.

After the initial success of the restaurant – “lightning in a bottle,” Johnny has called it – a second location opened at Voss Road and Woodway Drive. Eventually, the original Carrabba’s outgrew its 3,000 square feet and moved to a newer, larger space.  What began with a relatively simple concept – a casual Italian restaurant that featured a wood-burning pizza oven, big bowls of pasta, and an open kitchen – would become the heart of Houston’s dining scene.

But for all the changes Carrabba’s has undergone over the years, some things have remained constant: Our commitment to fantastic food, the warm, inviting, comfortable, family-oriented feeling of our restaurants, mature servers who understand the value of impressing and appreciating our guests, and a staff that has fun and knows our customers by name.

We don’t operate our restaurants based on lessons learned in some fancy cooking school or business book. We operate them based on heart and soul, and a belief that our job at the end of the day is to give our guests an experience they’ll love – and remember. And that’s what we do. Every day.