Last year, the casual Italian restaurant known for giant plates of food, Buca Di Beppo, filed for bankruptcy. It wasn’t the first restaurant fitting this description to go bankrupt, as it followed in the footsteps of Austin, Texas-based Johnny Carino’s. Still kicking around with 24 locations, Johnny Carino’s was once a small empire of 170 restaurants serving Italian nachos, fried raviolis, and sizzling skilletini cacciatoris in portion sizes built for leftovers. We even have the restaurant — known for its extra-large plates of chicken parm — ranked higher than Buca Di Beppo on our list of top Italian restaurants in America.
Johnny Carino’s was founded in 1994 in Fort Collins, Colorado, when Brinker International, the Texas-based group behind Chili’s, gave its Executive Chef for its Italian division, Johnny Carino, the reins to open a new restaurant. The idea was then bought by what is now the restaurant group, Fired Up. The concept is a grown-up, family-style Italian restaurant where you can get platters that feed 2-3 people.
It filed for bankruptcy twice, once in 2014 and again in 2016. In its second bankruptcy filing, blame was placed on a sluggish oil and gas industry and the Affordable Care Act. The chain is now owned and operated by the Bluestone Hospitality Group.
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Where is Jonny Carino’s Now?
sign for johnny carino’s – Ken Wolter/Shutterstock
The original namesake chef, Johnny Carino, is now a private chef in St. Simons Island, Georgia. Eight years after launching his restaurant, Carino had a seven-year run as a television chef on PBS’s “Break Me Off a Piece of That.”
His restaurant is still around, the remaining 24 locations are in 11 states, mainly in California and Texas. The business seems to be trending downward, with locations sometimes closing at the last minute, offering the staff virtually no warning. In 2020, the current ownership, Bluestone Hospitality Group, signed a deal with Famous Dave’s to establish ghost kitchens for the barbecue chain to deliver food using the kitchens inside Johnny Carino’s locations. It was a natural pairing as Bluestone Hospitality is a franchisee for multiple Famous Dave’s locations.
All is not lost, however! A location in Laredo, Texas, that burned down in 2023, has started rebuilding and will hopefully open soon. Time will tell if this marks the start of a return to glory.
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