Marechiaro’s

Drove past this place for years and finally decided to try it last night. FANTASTIC!!! Great food and wonderful service

Great décor, amazing customer service and decent Italian food. The staff were singing Christmas Carols from the kitchen while we were there, which we liked.
Their garlic bread was exceptional. Our only minor disappointment was with the meat sauce on the pasta (it was sub-​par), but everything else tasted great! We plan on going back. :)

This Italian joint has really become a local favorite for my hubs and I for a nice local date night.
Very delicious homemade tasting Italian food. This place has been here for decades. You really can’t go wrong with anything you order here, but it seems we have our favorites each time we go; cheese bread with meat sauce, half order spaghetti and meatballs for me, and my husband waivers with the linguine alle vongole and the manicotti. One of my other favorite touches is the homemade salad dressing on the salads. Mmmmm.
Very reasonable prices and a super relaxed family atmosphere. It always amazes me that all of the kids you see there are so well behaved. It’s kind of cool to know that it’s a locals spot (for good reason) and families frequent it.
Banquet room always seems packed whenever we’re there too.

Well Marechiaro’s proved once again why you should have them cater your next work function where delicious authentic Italian food is in order! Yesterday we had our annul holiday luncheon here at work. We ordered the lasagna, pizza, garlic bread and salad for thirty people. All of the employees ate to their hearts content and everything was hot, fresh and absolutely wonderful. I cannot say enough about Marechiaro’s and the owner Pat. Pat is always very professional and makes doing business with a pleasure! Great customer service is always appreciated. So on behalf of the Public Defender’s in El Cajon WE THANK YOU and wish you all at Marechiaro’s a wonderful holiday and a happy New Years!

Definitely the best Italian Restaurant I have been to. I live right down the street from here and drive by it every day ever thought twice about this place… Boy was I missing out. GREAT portions. GREAT food and amazing service! I definitely recommend to anyone that likes Italian food or just great service!

I met family here for a Friday night dinner and we were seated right away, even though the whole party had not yet arrived. The waitress was friendly and funny, and joined right in with our family humor.
I fid not try bites from others’ dishes, but they looked like they were enjoying their meals as much as I was enjoying mine! I’m a meat-​eater, so I asked for vegetarian lasagna with meat sauce instead of marinara. I was afraid the waitress would look at me strange for my order, but she said she gets that request a lot. I would definitely recommend it, it was delicious!

The restaurant was really cute and had a touch of Italy in it. The waitresses were extremely nice in fact a little boy was crying at a table and the waitress came and brought him over an Elmo doll/​toy from the bar to play with. He was happy quickly. Food was great and fairly large plates. Great friendly service.

I absolutely love this place. They have the best Italian food in East County hands down. Tonight we ordered the full lasagna dinner with Caesar (extra and on the side), a personal pepperoni pizza and the caprese salad. We’ve never sat in the restaurant, always get it to go but it’s always delicious. Not sure who was in the kitchen and at the front tonight but they got everything right on!!! The only bummer is that this location is closed on Mondays :(, but then we just drive out to Olde Hwy 80!

Great neighborhood Italian restaurant — been serving happy customers for more than 60 years now. Visited a couple nights ago to try a variety of different things. Cheesy garlic bread was terrific, pizza (extra cheese with pepperoni and sausage) great, and really good chicken parmesan. The spaghetti was a bit bland and overcooked, but that was the only negative. Great, friendly service, and the carafe of chianti put a nice glow over everything. Definitely recommended if you’re in the area — it’s definitely our new neighborhood go-​to.

We came here by accident. My bf was looking for an Italian restaurant he saw on the Food Network. It wasn’t until we sat down, he realized this wasn’t the one. However we decided to stay and it was one of the best decisions in restaurant history.
First off, the waitress really took care of us from the beginning. It was our first time and she brought us a sample of their cheese ravioli and their salsa rosa sauce, which is a combo of alfredo and marinara sauce. We order a caprese appetizer (which made the boys fall in love with it) and she also brought out an extra bowl of the salsa rosa sauce for our garlic bread. I ordered the special Seafood Pasta. It came with 5 jumbo shrimps, clams, scallops and 3 mussels on top of a bed of pasta in a white cream sauce. After giving away 2 shrimps and eating my portion for dinner, I still had a enough on my plate for tomorrow’s meal.
My bf ordered the veggie lasagna but the original meat lasagna came out instead. The waitress tried to say she heard him say the regular lasagna but she was kind enough to remake the veggie lasagna for him. Although, it didn’t arrive to the table for another 20 mins, when the rest of our table was almost finished with our food. Our other friend ordered the special Sea Bass Florentine and it came with a side of spaghetti. I think he thoroughly enjoyed it because he ate all of it! We also had 2 pitchers of beer with our meals.
I’d have to say that the service and the food was worth it. Delicious, definitely worth trying out, and you get two meals in one.

We were in the area when we decided to try something new. We were pleasantly surprise to find that the food and experience were even better than we had expected.
While we expected an experience similar to Filippi’s, it was NOTHING like it. We ordered and shared a full order of the meat ravioli with the cheese bread. I am not normally a fan of meat ravioli because I often find it bland. However, the ravioli was bursting with flavor. Not to mention, jam packed with meat. It was hardy and yummy. The cheese bread was equally delicious and flavorful.
The hostess and servers were also very pleasant. While it seems to be a family-​owned business, the staff is very professional. Overall, lunch was great! I would definitely return to try some other dishes.

Heard about this place from a co-​workers Aunt & Uncle. Have driven by this place countless times and never noticed it. We were craving Italian, so we dropped in.
It’s a cute 3 room restaurant with booths, tables, and belly tables. Great for dinner with the family, date night with your babe, or a drink with friends. They have takeout as well.
The portions are large and in charge. You really get what you pay for. One pasta plate will feed two.
Garlic bread comes with the entrees. The pizza is great.
So far I’m in love with Pasquale’s Spicy Pasta Special.
The tiramisu is made in house, from what I understand, and is probably top 3 of the best I’ve had.
We definitely will be return customers.

Great for all
Best for large or small parties and the service is great every single time.

Dimly lit italian family restaurant. Service is great. Food is slightly above average. I would return and recommend because i consider it a hidden gem. I ordered the portabello mushroom ravioli per friendly recommendation.
My problem with italian restaurants is that i feel i could make the same food at a fraction of the cost at home. the quality may not be on par, but admittedly, my italian taste palette enjoys Olive Garden. My italian friends despise OGs inauthenticity.
Pros: service is great. i liked the mushroom ravioli, but it tasted/​reminded me of campbells cream of mushroom soup, which led me to believe i could recreate this at home very easily. Probably not. My second thought was, I should have ordered the half lasagne half spaghetti, as boring as that sounds. Hey I like that stuff. Next outing, I will order it. I love that it is a very old school type of eatery.
Cons: Although we received great service, we did not get our garlic bread refilled. I was under the impression that it was complimentary. We did not make a refill request, so no sweat. I cannot think of anything else.
I will more than likely return.
Lamentably, if they make spaghetti with a large meatball, i’ll be back for sure.
sm

Always love the meatball sandwich at this place and the wine with my love
The service here is great …

This Italian spot is amazing! I am a big Italian fan and this hits the mark! The restaurant is family run and the owner is typically there every time I visit the restaurant so you can tell he is invested and cares about his business and the customers.
The food is always on point and has great flavors. I typically get the manicotti, the portion size is favorable and always served at a hot temperature and with plenty of cheese. Entrees come with soup or salad, the salads have good toppings like olives, pepperchinis, tomatoes, etc.
The complimentary garlic bread is on a sesame loaf, pretty tasty and I always end up asking for a second basket (I love carbs)!
My #1 choice is manicotti but I have been known to get their pizza too, they have incredible sauce so if you end up going here, I suggest getting an entrée and maybe a pizza to-​go for the next day!
Haven’t had dessert yet because I leave so full and satisfied I have not had any room to enjoy.

I spoke too soon! My boyfriend and I came here last Friday for a belated Valentine’s dinner. We tried this place out for the first time last year on Valentine’s Day and loved it so we thought we would make it our official spot for the occasion. Of course, the first time we came here, they weren’t busy at all and everything went well. This time around, we definitely expected a crowd since it was prime time on a Friday night (luckily, the wait was only 25 minutes). We took a seat at one of the high, round tables and realized as we were waiting that we could order beers at the register right next to our table. I walked up and ordered 2, Ballast Point Sculpin IPA’s. The female employee helping me out was a little rude but I tried not to read into it too much. I noticed she was looking over me and talking to other guests, which is fine if you want to acknowledge the regulars, but at least make some eye contact with me and not act like I’m an inconvenience. I noticed that the people she was chummy with were older folks so I thought maybe she just wanted to be extra helpful with them and didn’t realize that she was half ignoring me. Either way, their star rating hadn’t gone down yet in my book because of this.
By the time we were seated, we were starving. When our waitress finally arrived at our table, we had already figured out which appetizer and pizza we wanted. We ordered a couple of waters, garlic bread with marinara, and the White Pizza (with ricotta instead of feta). Our waitress noticed that we had already ordered and paid for beers while we were waiting to be seated and asked if we wanted more beer. We said that we weren’t ready for beer yet, as they were still half full, but we would probably want some when our pizza came out. The garlic bread and marinara sauce came out within a reasonable amount of time. When our pizza came, we ordered a few more beers. By this time, the restaurant wasn’t as busy, but our waitress still had a full section. We noticed the people behind us were seated right around the time we ordered our beers so our waitress went over to help them after stopping at our table (as she should). After 10 minutes passed and we still didn’t have our beers, I wondered what the heck our waitress was doing. She had disappeared for at least 5 minutes and when she finally came back in sight, she went back to the table behind us to help them once again. She then attended to the rest of her tables, EXCEPT ours! Coincidentally, we were the youngest people in her section. This was now the second employee that I felt was not giving us the service we deserve due to age. My guess is that they think they won’t get tipped as well from younger people. Anyway, we were annoyed and decided we no longer wanted the beers because we were already finished eating. A different employee walked by and noticed we were looking around (looking for our waitress once again) and stopped to help us out. We told her that our waitress forgot our beers and we didn’t want them anymore. We also told her we wanted a box and our check. She said she would bring a box and let our waitress know that we were ready to close out.
Here’s where it gets interesting. I got up to go to the bathroom and my boyfriend stayed at the table to wait for our check. While I was in the bathroom, my boyfriend had the pleasure of dealing with our waitress. He told me when I got back to the table that she came over with the bill and said, «Since I forgot your beers, I didn’t charge you for the drinks.» He laughed because we had already purchased the drinks at the register while we were waiting to sit down and she KNEW that. He reminded her that the drinks we already paid for. Her response, «Oh, I am glad I didn’t charge you guys for them then!» ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He said she walked away after that. She must have known how bad that sounded because she didn’t even have the guts to come back our table after running our card. Some other girl literally tiptoed over and dropped our card off without saying a word (okay?). The thing is, if our waitress really wanted to be helpful, as she claimed, she would have taken the bill back and removed another item. For instance, the charge for the substituted cheese on the pizza would have been nice since she didn’t tell us about that or even the extra charge for the marinara sauce. Not charging us for 2 beers would have been a loss of $ 9 on their part, yet she wasn’t willing to take off anything else. I mean, we paid $ 4 for garlic bread and marinara sauce that they could have easily removed from the check as it is probably really inexpensive for them to make. Better yet, I would rather her just come over and apologize for forgetting the beers and not act like she was going to do us any favors. That is what really infuriated us. I wanted to like them still despite the terrible service and immature employees, but that final remark did it for me. Mistakes happen, but how you handle them is what really matters.

I expected better from this place! Always heard great reviews about this one and only Italian spot in El Cajon.
Food: Anyway, I get the spaghetti meatball which alright but I’m not going to lie the meatball was good (hence the 2 stars). The sauce was extremely watery which makes everything gross. Something that doesn’t make sense is that the full order cost around $ 9 but the half order costs $ 8. Does that even make sense? I’m not complaining about the price because that’s pretty cheap but anyone would rather get the full order for a buck more.
Service: SUCKS. Went in and no one greets you? Awkward. And wow the server didn’t care about us what so ever. Didn’t care check up on us and came whenever she wanted.
Much better service at Nicolosi’s!

My husband and I have been dining regularly at Marechiaro’s (Second Street), for many years. We are frequently in for lunch or dinner, and occasionally take-​out also. When we are at Marechiaro’s we feel like we are amongst family, and the food is always fantastic– no wavering on either. We LOVE the pizza, raviolis, manicotti, meatballs, lentil soup and iced tea. The staff is incredibly helpful from suggestions on menu items to keeping your beverage full, and everything in between.
Here are a few additional things to know: 1.) Closed on Monday 2.) EVERYDAY they have lunch menu (until 2pm), many of the items include a soup or salad and a beverage. 3.) The word is out– this place has great food, so if you visit in the evening, especially Friday or Saturday, it will be busy (good for them, a sign of a healthy business), plan accordingly. 4.) There is a parking lot in-​front of the restaurant and behind, also street parking, too. 5.) There is a nice banquet space available. We often see parties going on! 6.) Marechiaro’s (Second Street) is NOT related to any other restaurant– don’t be confused, there is absolutely NO comparison. 7.) The soup can be ordered for take-​out (an entire quart – Yum!!). 8.) You can choose from various sauces for many of the pastas. Also, you can request many of the pasta dishes be baked. (I’ve seen people order baked spaghetti!!)
Thank you Jacquie and Anna for all the fun!

I’ve only dined here once, but my experience was world class. From the food, service, and the décor.
The food were moderately price and their meals are served in large portions (can’t complain). I ordered the half and half lasagna and ravioli. Their house sauce was tasty and savory! I love it! Everybody loved what they ordered.
On top of the food, combined with service, made the dining experience to another level. They were consistently checking up on us and refilling our glasses. The wait staff were attentive which i greatly appreciated.
This location is located in a small plaza. The décor of the restaurant was one of those things where you walk in and you feel like you are different place. The décor fit the theme of the restaurant.
This place was great! I’d definitely come back again when I am in town. I highly recommend this place to everyone!