Romano's Macaroni Grill — Restaurant in Roseville

*Broken Booth Seats (two out of two booths) *Lipstick on Glass *Obviously microwaved pre-prepared food (warm on outside, cold on inside) *Staff Complacency / understaffed or under trained.

So disappointing. I wavered on whether or not to post this review, because the whole experience was just one thing after another. However, I do think the franchise owner should be aware and needs to step in to better the restaurant and training of staff.

Service was not bad. Our server made a few slip-ups, which will be explained below, however, I feel that these were quite possible the result of there not being enough waitstaff and him feeling like he had to run all over the restaurant to serve his customers.

Upon walking in, we were greeted by the GM. Very friendly guy and we were seated in a booth (as requested). The seat in the booth was broken! It leaned all the way back and the support was broken in the seat itself as well. This should be a known issue and customers should not be seated there until it is fixed. The customers behind us said they were originally seated there and had to move, so staff had already been informed. We asked to be moved and we were seated at another booth. That seat was also broken!!! The support on the cushion was broken as well and the side was taped up to show that there was an attempt to repair at some point. My husband chose to deal with it and moved all the way toward the wall where there was some a bit more support and sat there. Two out of the two booths we sat in were broken - why were these booths being used for guests?

We also noticed that there was still an oil ring on the paper on the table and a few other oil marks leading us to believe that the paper had not been changed between guests.

We were given food menus, but no drink menu. Thankfully, there was a QR code to scan for that. The server came back to take our drink orders (water and a couple drinks from the bar) and said he would bring our bread. The drinks arrived and as my husband went to drink out of his water, he saw a dark pink lipstick mark around the rim and front of the glass. In all honesty, the bartender and server should be trained to look for this before serving drinks, but I understand it can be missed. He apologized and replaced the water and glass and gave us our bread. However, we then had to call him over again to ask him for utensils and napkins. At this point, I was just shaking my head.

We placed our food orders - Chicken Scaloppine with a Caesar Salad and Penne Rustica. The food arrived in a timely manner and we were ready to eat. Both meals arrived on cold plates, which is a bit unusual, but my husband's pasta was warm and cooked al dente as preferred. My Chicken Scaloppine, however was COLD. Not room temp, but cold. It was thoroughly cooked, warm-ish on the outside, but absolutely cold on inside. There is no way that it was a freshly prepared chicken breast. For it to be somewhat warm on the outside. but then cold on the inside, while still being fully cooked - it had to be premade and refrigerated/frozen and then microwaved. Huge disappointment, and in all honesty, not acceptable at all. I did not mention it to my server as I wasn't looking for a comp, and there had already been so many things that had gone wrong during our visit. I just ate what I could and left it at that. It was almost comical, it was like being on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. Either that or we were being punked.

Our entire visit and experience led me to question the training of the staff (although I really do think our server was doing quite well considering), the sanitary and cooking measures of the kitchen, and the involvement of the franchise owner in taking care of his/her restaurant and restaurant staff. Very sad considering this is a large restaurant chain and should have some very standard protocols. Not sure if we are willing to give this location a...

The only positive thing about my visit was that the food was pretty good.

We came in yesterday (4/26) for my friends birthday. It seemed okay at first, we were seated in the lounge area. However about 15 minutes after sitting this big group of 6 people comes to sit at the table next to us which one one side is separated by the tables and sharing a couch seat. Well, apparently this group of old folks ran into two of their friends who pulled up a chair on one side, then the other sat NEXT to my friend on the other side. One of the old ladies was like “oh sorry we are just here until we get our table” the bar was FULLY OPEN mind you. It was so rude, and they say the younger generation is incompetent. We were saying we felt uncomfortable but the older people (who were literally blocking us from getting out didn’t move even though none of them were originally seated there. I wish the management could have removed them because I was floored at how rude and inconsiderate those people were for trapping us in our space and being extremely loud. I told them they were rude and they just kept sitting there. The manager moved our table and then I guess apparently they ran into EVEN MORE people and they started joining the spot. I am shocked at how idiotic and out of touch people can be when it comes to personal space. Management didn’t do anything about it.

We ordered all appetizers and drinks before happy hour ended at 7. We had our reservation at 6. At 7:15 they got the last of our appetizers out, and didn’t even give us their COMPLIMENTARY bread that we asked for four different times. They either forgot our dishes (we know this because they said after an hour they had “just put them in”) they took our bread to another table , and a group of people that got there a half hour later than us got their bread before we did. Our waiter was slow, service was slow.

To top it off, at first they didn’t use the happy hour prices and he went to go put them in and had to do extra work to change the prices and it was STILL inaccurate. Our waiter told us he took 18.50 cents off, our previous total was $89.00 and then our total ended up being $76. That is NOT 18.50 off, I don’t know how you messed up math that badly. My friend ended up paying because they were so slow that we just wanted to leave. She has the receipt. What you should’ve have done was put in all our orders before 7, but of course they forgot that just like they forgot our bread and appetizers.

Frankly we should have been comped from items on our ticket just because of the horrible experience, the forgetfulness, the inaccurate amount on our check and for the horrible experience with that group infiltrating our space.

This was a terrible experience and I feel horrible that my friend’s birthday dinner was way below par like this. Do better and I sure hope you contact us to apologize and fix your mistake...

Didn't care for their take out food! Just wasn't good and your kinda screwed as your already in it. Kind of hard to return it.

Since I got a response from the owner I am adding another star. Thank you for actually responding to people's reviews. When I made this review I was tired and had been running around all day. I Was expecting a good meal as I know that the macaroni grill has in the past put out some great tasting food. This experience was quite different and not up to par. Both my wife's dish and my own just tasted blah!! I couldn't finish mine and tried hers and was like nope! She had a sun-dried tomato pasta dish and I had a meat ball spaghetti. I was super hungry and excited about getting this dish only to be let down. The bread was good but the oil and vinegar wasn't so great. We have our own oil and vinegar here so I made my own mix for the bread. So all the bread got ate but the food got tossed. I believe we paid a good $70 for our food and felt like we wasted our money. Another thing that bothered me was we did a online order for pick up and take home. But my wife needed something in her as she wasn't feeling good cause she hadn't eaten much that day. So I go in the bag to get her salad out which by the way was ok but not all that. But being take out you usually get something to eat your food with. At least a fork or something but nope nothing to eat our food with, so then we have to drive the 30 mins to get home to eat our food that tasted like someone just didn't care the way their food tasted. Now was this because it was a take out order and not someone right there eating that could send there food back to hopefully get a better tasting dish. We who order online or by phone for take out should have extra care in the preparing of this food that someone has to take home to eat and don't have much other choice. Anyway sorry for the poor review, I hardly ever give a bad review. But sometimes it just has to be done. I think especially when we're going through this Coronavirus where many people are ordering and taking it home to eat. I realize that this epidemic is putting a wrench in every aspect of our lives!! But if you want to retain business and customers then you need to make sure the food going out is up to par! If not you know what happens. The issues we are forced to deal with could be a reason but it didn't look super busy as the tables outside were 25% full. I've had a few bad meals from places since this corona started. So I wasn't super surprised. I honestly don't know if I will ever try this spot again, not when I can make what I got better. Things like this happening make me want to just cook my own food, at least I know whats going...