Roma's Italian Eatery — Restaurant in Owatonna

Went for lunch with my wife and this was our first time going to Roma's. Long story short, Roma's has a long way to go in terms of improvements to make, to enhance the experience to meet the prices they charge. Bland food, upscale prices, generic restaurant feel, no bread, and overall Roma's seemed like an uninspired copy of Olive Garden.

Walking in, you can't really tell it's an Italian restaurant. It looks and feels nice, modern, and upscale, but generic, with no convincing Italian theme, smell, or sound; weird to mention, but the best Italian restaurants I've been to nail the atmosphere just walking in the front door and Roma's seemed just bleh.

We ordered food, drinks, and dessert. The drinks were pretty alright, (we got a Lemon drop and a moscow mule) a little more boozy than I expected, but taste was decent. The food...uhh... was incredibly bland and just warm enough. The lunch offering seems to be a decent deal, with a side and an entree for $15 and enough options. We got the Zuppa Toscana soup, the Chicken and Gnocchi soup, Chicken Alfredo, and Chicken Parmesan pasta. The Zuppa Toscana was spicy at times, but bland in smell and taste. The Chicken and Gnocchi only had 3 gnocchi pieces in it! For the entrees, the chicken in both was dry, the pasta was okay, but the sauces were disappointing. The marinara was red but had no flavor, and while the alfredo sauce was kinda creamy, it was bland as well; these are sauces that are supposed to be packed with herbs and spices so to have nothing in smell or taste is impressive. Additionally, the food was warm, not hot. Before we started eating the waiter even asked if our food was hot, which I thought was a weird question until taking a bite and then looking at other google reviews.

For dessert we ordered tiramisu. What showed up was surprising to what I was expecting and while an interesting take on tiramisu, I feel like Roma's should really work out actual tiramisu before serving their interpretation. The tiramisu showed up in a glass with the cake all blended up, with a very small dusting of cocoa powder on top. There was way more mascarpone than ladyfingers, and while the mascarpone was nice and creamy there was just way too much to be enjoyable. There was really no coffee flavor at all and again overall the dessert was bland.

I thought the actual service was fine, no issues there. Professional and respectful. We only interacted with our server, however.

I am grateful and excited for another restaurant in town, and we will definitely give Roma's more chances later on (we have to try the dinners)! However, Roma's needs to really spend some time and resources on improving their product in order to enhance the value of their experience as well as remain competitive with other restaurants down town. As they get more comfortable I hope they can move past underwhelming, lukewarm, and bland dishes and can delight with exceptional Italian food and atmosphere! It is obvious to me that there was a ton of investment into the restaurant itself from what it was, which is awesome to see, but we just need the actual experience inside the restaurant to reflect that...

On a shopping trip to Owatonna this afternoon and went to the shoe store downtown. Not really planning on dining but when leaving the shoe store across the street we see a restaurant … Roma’s. My friend and I decided to check it out. We were promptly seated and given menus and told our server would be with us shortly. In the minute or two it took our server to arrive at our table we had already looked over the menu and decided we just weren’t in the mood for Italian. As mentioned our stop was in the fly without forethought - people do change their minds - it happens. So our server arrives and my friend asks me if I’d like to stay or go and I explained to our server I was more in mood for a steak, she then proceeds to explain how you prepare your New York strip. I simply responded by saying I wasn’t really interested in a New York strip. The response of that server was, in no other words I can come up with, extremely childish unprofessional. She’s literally huffs at us and swiftly turns and walks away with no further word to us.

My friend and I each have 35 plus years experience in the food&beverage industry as kitchen staff, servers, bartenders and management.

If I could give a review based solely on this server alone I would do so as we didn’t try any food and simply because nothing listed on the menu appealed to us at that moment— it happens.

We were told the name of our server when the first girl sat us but we couldn’t remember but I wish we had because this review is based solely on her lack of professionalism. We were in around 5:30 pm Monday January 29. Whatever her name is please get to the bottom of it with her because she needs much more training in customer service in addition to somehow obtaining mature emotional control. When we left and went across to Torey’s to eat we both decided it would be very interesting to see how this person responds and handles the stress of an actual difficult situation…yikes!!! Needless to say it’s unlikely that either of us will return to find out how good your food really is because it would be unfortunate to...

We were excited to try a new restaurant, especially one that offers gluten-free options. We previewed the menu in advance (IYKYK), and kind of decided on what we wanted. We arrived around 2:45 and the wait staff had trouble locating the menus. We were the only party there. Once we were seated, I noticed the menus we were given did not match those we had looked at online. When I asked if there was another menu or a lunch menu available, we were told they had already stopped serving lunch at 3:00. This is understandable, but it was prior to that time and there was no mention of the menus being separate on the website.

We ordered a chicken parmesan and a gluten-free chicken tortellini. The chicken parm arrived and looked wonderful, but the GF tortellini arrived as penne. When I pointed out that I had ordered the tortellini, the waitress seemed annoyed and like it should have been obvious. She stated all the GF dishes come with the rice based penne. In the end we were comped half the price of the dish. The sauce was good, but the noodles were over done and crumbling. Our waters went unfilled, one went down to completely empty. Again, we were the only party there.

When the waitress brought the bill and asked how the meal was, I asked if I could offer some feedback, mentioning that the GF pasta was overdone, but that I understood that is easy to do. I also mentioned that there was no note of the lunch and dinner menu times on either the menu or the website, and suggested it could be noted on the website. The waitress brushed me off, stating they are "in between managers".

We aren't local, and will not be making a special trip to go back, despite the food being good. Next time we are back in the area, I think we'll try a...