Romano's Macaroni Grill — Restaurant in Milpitas

I'm 60 years old and have never ever felt a strong enough desire to provide a review for any dining experience until this evening than this evening at the Romano's Macaroni Grill in Milpitas, CA. When my wife, daughter and I first arrived it was roughly 5pm on a Sunday 1/14/2024 and there were only around 3-4 tables with patrons seated. After walking in the front door we proceeded to the maitre d podium in plain sight of all the service staff making eye contact as we waited for nearly 15 minutes before being approached and greeted. When we were seated we were provided menus and asked what we would like to drink. My wife and daughter ordered lemonade and I water along with Lasagna bites & Brussel spouts for the appetizers. Never having eaten here we took a few minutes to review the menu then ordered our entrées. My wife chose the Mama's Trio, our daughter the same replacing the Lasagna with extra Fettuccine Alfredo and I the Steak medium well and Potatoes. The water and lemonade came instantly afterwards followed by bread with olive oil. We received the Lasagna bites which were delicious! Everything seemed fine up to that point though, it went down hill from there! When we received our entrées, after a little wait which is normally expected when your meals are being prepared they arrived and were served to us by two young ladies. All appeared great until my wife spoke up and said her fettichinni pasta was very dry as was our 17 year old daughters. My wife also said the Fettuccine and Lasagna were cold. I tried both my wife and daughters meals only to agree with both of them. It was if their meals had been sitting isolated for 20 minutes after being cooked then served to us. I then tried my mashed potatoes which we're also cold as was my Steak and the broccoli. I needed to use the restroom and on my way passed by one of the young servers and mentioned the meals were all cold. She offered to put them back in the broiler to heat everything up and I directed her to my wife then, went to the restroom. When I returned my wife said that they would recook everything as she apparently didn't want the pasta to become more dried out. The entire 3 meals were prepared within 5 minutes and brought to our table which I was somewhat surprised by as it took roughly 25 minutes for the original mail to be prepared. When the meals did arrive my Steak was meadium rare and appeared to have gone from a 10oz Steak to a 6oz Steak and, the potatoes were still cold. During our entire dining experience not once did anyone stop by to ask us how the meal was or, if needed anything. My wife left her Lasagna untouched and barely ate any of her Fettuccine Alfredo and our daughter did the same. At the end of our dinner a gentleman server was providing outstanding service to a party of 4 in the table adjacent to us. As he finished I asked him if he could please let our server know that we were ready and to please provide us with our check. He kindly agreed saying that he was assigned to us and promptly provided us with a breakdown of our meal expenses making sure everything was properly accounted for at which time We thanked him for his professional manner and demeanor. There are always 2 sides to any story. Rhjs was our side as the patrons and after I signed for our bill..we, the patrons departed afterwards to...

I'm NEVER one to complain, but my experience here on 10/7/18 warrants it!!

It was an absolute disaster from the beginning. When we got first got there, we were told that there was approx. 25 min wait for a party of 4... no big thing...

After my personal observation, I noticed that there were several open tables where the recent parties just departed. These tables sat open for 15 mins or more, and then I realized that who ever did the scheduling did not have enough bussers available. I only saw a bus boy cleaning tables. TALK ABOUT BEING GROSSLY UNDERSTAFFED! C'MON MAN!

After inquiring with the host/manager after 35 mins, we were then seated. The table wasnt prepared, no utensil settings, no glasses... really?!? Being patient, I let it slide...

Waiter eventually came around and took our order after sitting arnd for 10 mins. Again, no utensil settings but we got our drinks... and bread... but no utensils. I finally had to ask another waiter if we could get some settings...

We placed 3 orders of appetizers; calamari, mac n cheese bites, and fresh mozzarella. Calamari came w/in 10 mins of the initial order. We proceeded to order our main dishes.

Our main dish came in 35 mins w/in ordering it, but the other appetizers havent arrived yet and no explanation... wth?! After working into our main dish, the remaining appetizers came 42 mins since placing it and 7 mins AFTER the main dish arrived.

After waiting all that time, we really didnt have any appetite to eat any more... would you or any one??? C'MON MAN!

Where is John Taffer when you need him? Good grief, talk about a bootleg operation! C'MON MAN!

If you have time to burn and really dont care about the quality of service, then this is your place. Sadly, for the price that they demand, you're better off cooking the meal yourself without the unwanted stress!!

In my personal observation, this place lacks: communication integrity compassion desire

Sadly, we were among 5 other parties who were waiting for service in this bootleg operation. John Taffer would scream out, "you're in the customer service business and your livelihood depends on it!! Are you f$&n crazy?!?"

Needless to say, our party left extremely disappointed. If I was a representative from this corporation and experienced what I went through, there would be a lot of unemployed people with the fear of this place shutting down..

This place is broken and needs help! Sorry to be brutally honest, but I'm pulling for you guys to stay...

This review is for a Grubhub delivery.

The food was good and packaged well aside from the oil and vinegar cups for the bread having opened and spilled inside the bag.

I ordered the signature truffle Mac and cheese and crispy mozzarella bites. The crispy mozz bites seemed like they had been way overcooked as they were all hemorrhaging dry, fried mozzarella and the insides were hollow.

My biggest problem however was ordering pasta from a restaurant whose menu consists primarily of pasta dishes, and not getting ANY silverware or napkins. How was this missed?? I had to call down to the front desk of my hotel and have someone bring a fork because no one at Romano's threw one in, and the Grubhub drivers don't stick around long enough to verify an order with the customer.

I disagree with the fundamental trend of sacrificing service for convenience and with a Grubhub delivery, I'm noticing no one takes accountability for an order. Sure, I can call the restaurant, but do I want to wait another 30 minutes for someone to drive back out to make my order right? This is compounded by the fact that my tip is pre-emptively applied so my one method of rewarding good service or highlighting bad is taken away from me.

I think both the restaurant and GH could do better. The restaurant needs to take better care with remote orders and ensure they are all 100% before going out the door, since problem resolution is much more complicated and time consuming; and I think GH as a service provider needs to emphasize correct service over fast service and incentivize workers at all points in the chain to follow suit.

I'm upset at RMG for not knowing their business and failing to include silverware to a hotel order for a food that cannot be eaten with hands, and GH needs to ensure orders that go through their process are correct before eating a customer's time and money. Next time I need to eat, I'll just go sit down at the restaurant. At least then when there's a problem, I can settle it...