Cafe Marcello

Moved into the area recently and decided to try this place out considering it was convenient and had good Unilocal reviews for the most part. Ordered a package they have for takeout which includes a regular pie, garlic knots, mozzarella sticks and a chicken roll for $ 23! A great deal, right?! We did ask if we could have pepperoni on half the pie and figured it would be an additional $ 1.75 which is the price indicated on the online menu. When we picked up the pie we noticed we had been charged an additional $ 4 for garlic bread. When we informed the man at the desk, who I’m assuming is the manager, of the extra charge for garlic bread he said it was due to the pepperoni on the pizza. When we told him of the online price he simply said that they charged us more because it was added to a package. Most places don’t charge $ 4 for a topping added to an entire pie! Just ridiculous! The mediocre food wasn’t good enough to make up for the poor service so we won’t be returning.

This Italian restaurant is great and I was raised in an Italian family.
The staff is very attentive, the food is incredibly good and the location convenient off highway.
My family stopped for dinner on way home to Long Island from JFK airport.

I have eaten here many times and the food and service is always great. I love their sauce and the portion sizes are perfect. Their take out pizza is also fantastic.

One of the best neighborhood restaurants ever. Nice atmosphere, good prices, GREAT food. Never walked away unhappy. Went there for Christmas Eve, everyone ordered a different dish and everyone was pleased with the choice. Never a bad meal here. Definitly try it, pizzas great, fun to stop in for a pie and a beer. Lunch menus great too! Will definitely be back.

Great Italian food! Servers are knowledgeable and courteous. Pasta is generally good. I did order the house made gnocchi and it was overcooked the past two times I ordered it but not too overcooked. I still enjoyed the experience and the performances by the singers that are there. It’s always a great place to go out on Saturday nights and I will define be going back there.

I highly recommend this place! My husband and I have eaten there a few times and was never disappointed! A majority of the time we have their food delivered and we are amazed at how fast the food arrives, usually within 20 minutes! The food is always hot, like it just came out of the oven and the portions are a good size. They really do a great job and everything we have tried so far from meals to pizza is DELISH!
Keep up the good work!

I have past this restaurant many times and this time decided to stop and try it. Yes I got there at an unually time, 4:45 PM but I was told that they were open and ready to serve us dinner.
I was asked at least 5 times by my waiter if I wanted to wait till 5:30 PM when they had a buffet or do I want to order off the menu. Since I was hungry I was not waiting till 5:30PM so said I would order off the menu.
I ordered the Tagiatelle Verdi which was okay. The portion size was very small, there were only 2 cherry tomatoes that were cut in half and not many mushrooms either.
I ordered tiramisu for dissert with a cup of coffee. The coffee was luke warm. Even my second cup was the same. They apparently have a few dessert menues with different prices on them as the menu I looked at the dessert was $ 6.95 and I was charged $ 7.95.
The manager had a pissy attitude from the get go as he was repermanding his employees while I was dining.
I also found out after I ordered dessert that there was a prefixe menu that was never offered to me.
I told the manager this as I about to pay and he just shrugged and gave a half ass sorry.
I believe that the least he could have done was take off the price of the coffee from the bill.
Not sure if I will be dining at this place ever again.

Had almost the exact experience of Big Bob B. Ordered the Orrechiette Barese, thought it was very tasty, good portion size. Nice bread basket. My wife and daughter had individual pizzas which they specifically asked to be crispy (and were). The place was freezing, as, even though almost empty, they sat us by the window. Attentive server. A find when visiting someone in Franklin Hospital up the block.

I have tried the pizza several times and it is ok. You have to ask for it well done so that the crust isn’t soggy. The prefix menu Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday is a very good deal for the money and the food portions are very generous.

This review is for their take out service. Saw they had a ad for a FREE 2 LITER SODA with ANY «pizza package» purchase. We selected package #1 (Only $ 15) which consisted of a pizza, 6 garlic knots & 6 mozzarella sticks. When I went to pick it up, I noticed they weren’t giving me the soda. I pointed out that it was supposed to come with the deal & the cashier promptly answered that the free soda only comes with «packages»; I gave them a funny look because quite frankly, Duh! Uh, I’m ordering package #1, aren’t I? The manager quickly spoke up & explained that the free soda offer was only for a LIMITED TIME ONLY! It says this nowhere on their ads. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A BAIT & SWITCH & is VERY MUCH SO CONSIDERED BAD BUSINESS! I walked out of there without making a big deal about it because I thought it was a good deal even without the soda & I didn’t feel like fighting or foraging for other food options at the time. That is, until I got home and began eating. The garlic knots were hard & burned, & mozzarella sticks were hard & undercooked. The pizza was thin & lackluster. I guess you get what you pay for. I’d rather spend a few extra bucks and get a quality pizza that I’d actually enjoy eating & not deal with charlatans who try to pull fast ones. STEER CLEAR OF THIS PLACE! In retrospect, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had not selected the cheapest package, would they have pulled this on me? If I had ordered the $ 50+ package, would they have still made excuses about not forking over the soda as advertised or do they only pull this on the smaller amounts? Fortunately I’ll never know because I’ve seen enough to never return.

dinner last night was great. We got to the restaurant around 6:30 there were about 10 tables full and we were seated right away. The waiter brought over a «special Mon-​Wed» menu. The value was incredible a 4 course meal for less than $ 20. We all ordered off the menu and everything was delicious, the amount of food was perfect. As appetizers I had the mussels (they were great), my daughter had baked clams (she almost licked the plate) and her boyfriend had the calamari. For pasta I had primavera and they both had penne alla vodka (they said the sauce was creamy and perfect). For entrée I had tilapia orgeanta, she had chicken franzese and he had tilapia franzese all three were perfect. We will definitely be back

Café Marcello is an attractive looking trattoria in Valley Stream. Certain things they cook are delicious: the bread basket or garlic bread, baked clams, eggplant rollatini, eggplant Parmesan, gnocchi, pasta with Bolognese sauce and dessert pizza.
I’ve had some off experiences with certain dishes, so I don’t order them again. I think it was because of my personal preference regarding a sauce or gravy served. Overall portions are generous. It’s conveniently located, the sauces are really good.
The take out part of the restaurant aka pizzeria was doing more business than the restaurant. I didn’t care but my friends were distracted by it immensely.

I saw good reviews so I expected something really good. The restaurant was nice, clean, and very busy which were all good signs. However, the vegetable served with my entrée was either canned or cooked way too much. I ordered the filet of sole oreganato and there was no question that it was frozen fish. It took a long time to get the meal so I wasn’t going to complain. The potatoes were good and the bread basket was as well. My mother ordered salmon and that was better than the fillet of sole. All in all, I would probably never go back here if I was in the area. It certainly wasn’t worth the $ 50 spent.

I simply cannot understand the good reviews of this place.
I have been here a few times.
The first time I sat down in an empty restaurant [after having to shout for someone to come out front and seat u — literally empty — at lunchtime] and we left within 10 minutes — sitting there noticing the dirty cups and silverware on the table and the smell of trash wafting in.
I’ve been a couple of other times — they have the warmth of an iceberg and the service is the antithesis of accommodating [and I’m not demanding — but when I walk into a completely empty restaurant — another time — at a dead hour and am told that instead of pushing a few tables together for our large party we’d have to sit at three separate tables — well I just can’t understand that] and quite frankly this is just one more restaurant with decent italian food in an area inundated with them — I won’t bother returning

I came here with my dad and his girlfriend for lunch. The place was very nice and fancy which I liked. However, it seemed like they looked down upon us for just ordering pizza. Also, a man that looked as if was the owner looked really strange and just walked around the restaurant while we ate. There was no one in the restaurant except a party in the back room. Why are you empty on a Saturday afternoon? That was a little strange to me. However, it wasn’t a terrible experience but it could be must better.

The definition of the 3-​star rating. Take it from me, this is not the 5 star service or dining experience some of my fellow Unilocalers here want you to believe. Would you believe a coupon is what led our party to this restaurant?
Café Marcello fairly recently had their business renovated and the inside though nice is sort of stuck in what I’ll call identity limbo. It has the menu and dishes to go all the way and being strictly a sit-​down Italian restaurant but with the pizza selection it also works as a take-​out pizzeria. There’s nothing wrong with this in fact a few of my favorite Italian restaurants have multiple sections to separate the casual take-​out person to the parties looking to wine and dine; the problem is they have no distinction. People came in frequently to order meals to go and pizza boxes and more would be flying between the sit-​down diners and the other customers, which for this reviewer takes away from the potentially intimacy of a nice meal. The décor and lighting is nice even if the tables are fairly plain and kitschy but without some sort of separation between the sections, it dampens the experience.
One unique element about the restaurant is that every Friday they have live music playing while you eat your dinner. The music was nice and the musicians played a variety of jazzy tunes but unfortunately the volume of their pieces was far too loud the majority of the time that instead of serving as a wonderful background ambiance, it was near impossible to engage in any form of conversation. Eventually they told the band to take their levels down a notch, which helped but it should have been like that to begin with rather than ¾ through my meal. I’ll also mention here that while our server t=was friendly, she was confused about some of our questions about specific dishes on the menu, which was disconcerting.
Menu prices were average for your typical middle of the road Italian restaurant; however portion sizes varied. We ordered a special fried chick pea with ricotta appetizer, which was tasty and a decent portion size of 8 pieces but the hot antipasto platter was expensive and paltry. It only came with one shrimp, two baked clams, one eggplant rollatini, and two stuffed mushrooms. For the price you pay, which I believe was $ 12 to $ 14, felt minuscule and that the amount of food given should have at least been 50% more for the price. All of the dishes were pretty good though especially the eggplant rollatini. The garlic bread they provided was soft and flavorful as well. For my entrée I ordered one of the specials of the day, lobster ravioli with shrimp and asparagus. The raviolis were well-​filled but surprisingly not bursting with flavor as you’d expect, considering that lobster raviolis tend to be one of my favorite dishes I have plenty of leeway with. The asparagus was decent but the portion was smaller than I’d have liked, about 4 pieces, and the shrimp that came with the dish was only A shrimp as in one single, though plump and delicious, shrimp. Some of the people in my party had mixed views of the other dishes such as white and margherita 10′ pizzas, where the reactions ranged from yummy to only average. The general consensus that the food was okay, but portion sizes and prices and overall quality was across the board. The same thing goes for the desserts; the nutella pizza with fruit, which I applaud them serving since only one other place I know serves that, was a little too dry primarily due to the slightly overly crisp crust, making the nutella and dough counteract with one another.
So with the aid of the coupon the final price of our meal was definitely okay and our experience, though flawed, was far from an unpleasant one. I’d possibly come back here again, although I think I need a coupon to sell me again. If they try to rework their restaurant layout to separate the diners from the take-​outers as well as consider increasing portion sizes (or at least be clearer about their portion sizes) then maybe I could see this place being a 4 star establishment. They definitely have some kinks to work out though and I wish Café Marcello all the best.

First time here. Very good service and food. Sicilian spring rolls excellent. Gnochi soft excellent pastas.

Great food… wasn’t crazy about the desserts…

Great hidden restaurant on Franklin Avenue, serving tasty Italian food.
Personally, I enjoy the chicken Cardinale, stuffed chicken breast with ham and cheese, Madeira wine reduction, mash and spinach. Also, really like the baked clams, not too much breadcrumb and they make it with whole clams.
My family went for Grandma’s birthday, and the service was great. Very attentive and accommodating… they took extra care with with everyone’s orders. Great job serving a table of 14.
They also are a pizzeria and my younger cousins loved the pizza too. And they are the official pizza snobs.

Decent food and apparently it is newly renovated. Came here for a party and while I had a great time at the party, they were extremely slow with the service. The food took a long time to come, they don’t swap out your plates and/​or forks. I literally had to use the same fork through appetizers to dessert.
I don’t know what the prices are like, but the place is fairly cute and can pass for a quick dinner. Not sure if I would consider this for anything more.