On a recent trip to Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, we decided to have “lunch” (it was 3pm) at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. Some of you may be familiar with this name as it is a franchised restaurant, and locally they have a location in Vancouver also.
It was a particularly warm day so we decided to sit outside beside the fireplace. This location is very well decorated. The inner dining room was had great ambiance. Our party kept saying how we felt like we were actually in Europe haha!
So we decided to order 3 small appetizer-type things to share. First up was the Romano’s Sampler ($10.99) which consisted of Tomato Bruschetta, Mozzarella Fritta and Calamari Fritti served with arrabbiata sauce (which tasted like an awesome marinara sauce).
All items in this dish was fabulous. The calamari actually tasted like real food (not tasteless, bland and spongy). The Mozzarella Fritta was really stretchy and the batter wasn’t too hard but crispy. The Bruschetta was very cute. It had tiny tomatoes sliced and dressed with garlic. We were very satisfied with this.
My choice was the Scallops & Spinach Salad ($8.99). This was a different salad in that it’s a warm salad. It had seared sea scallops with fresh spinach wilted and tossed with aged prosciutto, roasted garlic, fresh lemon and extra virgin olive oil.
It tasted fresh and definitely citrusy. The scallops were fresh and large, which a nice crisp outside and soft, meaty inside. It was very light as it was only dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.
Last was the Crab-stuffed Mushrooms ($8.99) which were fresh mushrooms filled with lump crabmeat, shrimp and Italian seasonings, then baked until golden.
We were surprised to actually taste real crabmeat in this and not the imitation stuff. It had consistency, not mushy like some places would make this. It was also served with a light cream sauce which I drizzled onto the caps. A plus was that the caps were consistent in size.
Needless to say we were all very satisfied with this visit to the Macaroni Grill.
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I think the one in Vancouver is no longer open. If I’m not mistakened, there was a kitchen fire a while back and it never reopened? Too bad, the time I went to the one in the Bay Area, I liked it.