Maggiano's - Houston

10/09/09

Excellent Service, Average Food

by Gary T at Citysearch

Let me start by stating that I am a former resident of New York City and I know excellent Italian cooking.

Maggiano's seems to be going the way of The Olive Garden as it pertains to the meals they offer: Lots of bland cream sauces and not much food flavor.

Oct 9, 2009 a friend and I both ordered ravioli meals. His was the 4 cheeses, mine was the veal and mushroom. Both came with heavy cream sauces garnished with ground basil and sun dried tomatoes. Italian bread was served. I had the chicken and potato soup.

The soup had very good flavor and was hot (and getting hot soup) seems to be a problem at a lot of restaurants.

The Italian bread: as they say in New York, "Eh." Not much flavor.

The two dishes: bland cream sauce, not much flavor, and it could have been Alpo and kale inside the ravioli and I would not have known the difference. The veal and mushroom ravioli was one of the higher priced entrees and to me and had NO discernible flavor. I wasted my money.

At this point, I'd rather spend less and go to The Olive Garden or Macaroni Grill (and I don't much like those places).

• Pros: Friendly staff
• Cons: Bland Cream Sauces

03/08/09

Only good for crowd and ambience.

by MikeJiang at Citysearch

I passed the limit, first half summarized- hostess nice, crowd/ambience nice, appetizer ok, garlic bread premade or just sat in the food window too long. a bit too much vinagrette for me. a preference thing though so no biggy

We then ordered, the waitress was very kind, but when i ordered the Chicken Saltimbocco, I asked what kind of sauce it was topped off with, and she told me a white wine, and I continued to say a white wine lemon butter sauce and she confirmed it. Since it was a cream sauce I told the waitress that I would just pair it with fettuccine alfredo. (On the menu i thought it was an extra $2.95 for added pasta to pair, this could be my misreading so I'm not going to discredit the waitress for that) When the dishes came out, the chicken was topped off and sitting in a big pool of marsala wine sauce, and in my head I was just like wtf haha. On top of that, she had forgotten about the pasta, so they had to go and make it, bummer. Now that I knew it was marsala wine sauce, in my mind I wanted another pasta, maybe spaghetti pomodoro or penne picchi pacchiu, just something red to go with this heavy brown wine sauce, but I worked as a waiter and i always feel bad for them so I didn't say anything. By the time the fettucine came out, my friend had already finished his Baked ziti which I might add tasted pretty good haha. Before it came out, i believe a manager came by but I didn't feel like causing trouble and waiting more so I just said everything was fine, I'm sure the waitress went to the manager to see if we were mad or something. The pasta came out, it was the full portion meal of it, and very firm(dried pasta, not fresh), perhaps undercooked, and the fettuccine looked like linguine. Once I cut into the chicken, you could tell it was processed and felt like a filet i would get at wendy's. I only ate half and just threw the rest away. This restaurant would be either on par or a bit underneath Grand Lux Cafe, ambience is nice, food is very average at best

• Pros: Nice crowd, Our hostess and waitress were nice, very casual
• Cons: Chicken was obviously processed, not fresh, pasta was obviously dried, not fresh, food is very, very average, come for the crowd and the galleria, not for authentic italian food

03/19/06

Will not go back

by GDS at Citysearch

The service was extremely poor and the food was only average. There are much better itialian resturants in the area. Maggianos has even stopped putting herbs in the olive oil for the bread. No taste just oily. Spoke with onsite management and everything was passed off as corporate decisions.

There are numerous resturants in the immediate area that are more worthy of customers.

• Cons: terrible service, lukewarm food

04/15/05

OVER RATED!

by fillabuck at Citysearch

Large portions with no flavor, bland tasting food. This chain is the same in Philadelphia, Chicago and Houston, not even average tasting Italian food, very disappointed.

• Pros: none
• Cons: huge bland tasting portions

01/02/03

Soprano's The Houston Chapter

by bunny03 at Citysearch

THis is what I suspect Chicago looks like. The bar is very entertaining but the food is huge portions of nothing, I should have eaten the tablecloth it probably had more flavor.