Romero's Tuscany By The Sea — Restaurant in Flagler Beach

Since we moved down from the Ny/LI area last June, finding quality food has been an interesting challenge. We thought we found our Italian food establishment in Terranova’s in Bunnell. Unfortunately they closed a few months ago( possibly due to a fire). Our quest continued until we discovered a wonderful family run place in Flagler Beach on A1A across from the pier….Romero’s Tuscany by the Sea. It’s an all hands on family effort and it shows in their commitment to old NY style Italian food quality. I’ve been in the business for over 2 decades…I’ve run the front of the house and the kitchen. I’ve had my share of bad meals and mistakes over that time. Tough business. Our server was one of the family members,Victoria, and her mom was running the floor. We hit it off immediately and Victoria was the quintessential professional. If I was training my staff she would be the one to learn from. Dad runs the kitchen and all of his various sauces were excellent. We had the fried calamari followed by my chicken parmigiana,while my wife chose one of the pasta specials, Pasta con Sacicce, which she loved. Their pasta night specials(Monday and Tuesday) are a great value…soup/salad,entree,dessert and a glass of wine. Unfortunately for me,my chicken parmigiana was overcooked as the edges were burnt making it a bit tough. It happens. I still cleaned my plate. My real issue was the amount of side pasta on my plate. I’ve never seen a smaller portion,essentially a little more than a handful. Nonetheless we will absolutely return. I’m looking forward to tasting many of their delectable dishes and the pizza! FYI…make reservations and oh by the way,parking is tough. This is clearly a four or five star rustic old styleItalian restaurant surrounded by the Flagler Beach vibe. Go and enjoy. Steve.

...and then we returned....and had an excellent dining experience. The chicken francese was very good but the francese sauce was outstanding. My wife's sausage and linguini in a garlic sauce was equally great. Hot homemade bread,crisp fresh salad with a wonderful Italian vinaigrette dressing are the preliminaries to a fine meal. Make reservations, small but...

I'm still trying to figure out how this went so wrong? The reviews are all so great so maybe our expectations were too high? We arrived around 530 and we're seated immediately. The restaurant is very cute! Our server greeted us and brought us drinks, things started off great. We waited for a while for her to come back for our order, once we placed our order we sat and watched people get up around us and new people seated and brought their apps, soups and salads. We still had nothing but bread. We waited about 45 mins for our stuffed mushrooms and they were extremely cold, the waitress just said "oh that's not good" and took them to be reheated.. By 630 our soup and salad finally came. Eventually our mushrooms showed up and had been reheated.

By 7pm we still didn't have our food and had to ask the waitress if it was coming and to please just bring us the check and a box when the food was finally ready. Our food showed up at about 715 we took a couple of bites and left.

Sadly, the food was NOT worth the wait. I ordered chicken marsala , the mushrooms were cold, the sauce was extremely watery and lacked flavor. My husband got the veal Parm and it was just "ok".

Completely disappointed in the service and the food. At no point did anyone apologize. If you're curious, yes we paid full price and nothing was done about the very cold food or the wait. All of this would have been bad enough except we watched people come in after us, sat next to us and have their food before we had ours. Terrible experience, terrible price for cold not so good, cold food. I wish I could recommend but I just can't. The only good thing was the hostess was very nice and friendly.

Hopefully your experience is better than ours as this does seem out of the norm based on...

The two of us walked in on a busy evening and were kindly greeted with notice of a short wait. When seated, our server offered to pour our wine and topped both glasses all night, a very nice touch.

Toasted baguette with olive oil & herbs were exceptional to start. Followed with baked clams, beautifully prepared. The bar, dining room, and party space were buzzing but never too loud. We felt so relaxed, thanks in large part to our server who never missed a beat.

Our entrees were delicious. I highly suggest adding shrimp to the carbonara. They are deveined properly and butterflied on the grill. During our meal, friendly bussers cleared dishes from our table, which felt like VIP treatment.

Our leftovers were neatly boxed and the server presented a fancy dessert tray with several fun choices including cheesecake from NYC, an edible teacup with chocolate mousse, and tiramisu. We ultimately chose the carrot and coconut cake(s). Both were just as good the next day- a must try.

To finish, we received complimentary champagne in celebration of getting married last month. A wonderful surprise!

I recommend paying cash as there is a standard 3% surcharge for credit (this helps small businesses maintain their hard-earned profits). We thoroughly enjoyed every minute of our dinner at Romero’s. It’s true luxury dining; one of the best-run establishments of Flagler Beach. If you made it to the end of this review, don’t wait to visit- you will...