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ELV suddenly realized it’s been more than one week since his last Bad Italian Food Review, so, in order to make it up to his readers, he thought some interesting facts about Maggiano’s were in order before he gets all medieval on its hillbilly ass:
> 28,608+ people like it on Facebook;
> Its official name is Maggiano’s Little Italy, although there isn’t one in New York City – the largest and most famous Little Italy in America. There is one in Boston, however, but it’s about as close to that city’s Little Italy as a Red Sox booster is to a Yankees fan;
> There appear to be 43 links in this chain, with real live Executive Chefs consulting on its menu items (A prime example of too many cooks spoiling the broth? Read on);
> Neither its website nor Facebook page tells you a thing about the corporation that owns it.
> Do a little digging, and you discover it is owned by the same Brinker International that owns Chili’s — a rapacious presence on our culinary landscape that began in Dallas (Texas, not Indiana) in 1975 with this guy:
(Would you buy a franchise {or a shirt} from this man?)
…a self-proclaimed “foodie” named Larry Lavine who, no doubt, cashed out long ago and is now living the high life eating anything but Chili’s burgers and “frosty mugs of beer.”
> Maggiano’s claims it is not a restaurant chain,
but more like an extended family, in the same sort of gobbledygook corporate proselytizing that middle America has been gobbling up ever since Heublein Corp. ruined Harlan Sander’s recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken and got away with it.
Of course, ruining Eye-talian food is what middle-American corporations have been doing for decades now.
Olive Garden, like Maggiano’s, has a website that tries to create a warm, homey, feel to disguise the fact that it’s a massive corporation running a fatuous food factory for frumptuous fools. Words like “family,” “passion,” and “genuine, ” and….we aren’t making this up…“hospitaliano” are bandied about, all in a strained attempt to distance the meretricious reality of these operations from the public’s perception of them.
ELV and his staff wouldn’t give a rat’s patootey about any of this if the food were any good, but, without going all Michael Pollan on you, we think we can confidently state that large corporations have never made anything taste better. They are about mass production and economies of scale — two concepts that fly directly in the face of maximizing the pure, honest flavors of good food.
But, as with 2nd and 3rd marriages, hope often conquers experience, so in we trudged to the Fashion Show Mall for a taste of “Little Italy.”
Getting the positives out of the way, we will admit if you have to eat at a corporate-owned, fake Italian restaurant, Maggiano’s does a good a job as any in making you feel welcome and comfortable. The booths and tables and chairs are big, spacious, well-appointed, and a step up from other franchised-frippery. Dark wood gives everything an old-world feel, and the place settings and stemware are also a notch or three above other similar restaurants.
Service has been top notch at all three of our lunches here, which brings up another kudo for these casual, corporate, full-service food factories: starting with TGIFriday’s in the early ’70’s and continuing today, the emphasis on good service in these places (including, we hate to admit, Chili’s) has had a ripple effect on restaurants throughout America. Snooty, distracted, inept or unfriendly waitrons have been practically non-existent in American restaurants for over thirty years, and wethinks this effect has rippled out (or trickled up) from the franchises and chains.
Nestor, our server for the meal pictured above, couldn’t have been nicer, faster, smoother or more informed than if he had been working at Spago or Le Cirque.
Unfortunately, most of the food he served us was utter dreck.
The highlight of the meal came early. A cheesy “Alfredo” sauce actually possessed some ‘Fredo, along with big, spicy pepperoni, all on a flatbread that was neither too crisp nor too spongy — in other words, just right.
From there everything devolved into what you would expect from a Texas investment corporation trying to mass produce food. Our salad was dressed with a strange, liquid, light to the point of non-existence. It was devoid of both oil and vinegar, yet claimed on the menu to contain both. “Well, that’s probably what passes for a vinaigrette in Vinegaroon,” was all ELV could think to himself.
From there we continued to something called “Rigatoni “D”” topped with crudely cut chicken strips and chunks, and canned mushrooms, all sitting in a pool of warm milk. (The menu promised an “herb-roasted chicken” with ‘shrooms in a Marsala cream sauce.) “Ah,” we conjectured, “that’s probably what they think Marsala is in Dallas.”
Sticking with our plan to try the white, instead of red sauces, we let ourselves be talked into crab and shrimp cannelloni — basically mushy crepes wrapped around a vaguely seafood-like mush of pre-chewed, toothless food into which a few forlorn shrimp bits had been thrust. “Gosh,” we garbled. “We don’t like it, but this just might be considered great in Galveston.”
Or maybe not.
After a few more bites, we decided to re-christen Maggiano’s The Home of Milky Mush Mid-Texas Eye-talian.
We highly recommend it to those who want to eat Italian food the way it will taste when they are 90 years old, at death’s door, and being spoon fed by a minimum-wage orderly who also changes their diaper.
And to Texans.
ELV’s meal pictured above, along with a $44 bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay, came to $120, including a $20 tip.
MAGGIANO’S LITTLE ITALY
In the Fashion Show Mall
3200 Las Vegas, Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109
702.732.2550
1. After a certain point of all this masticatory masochism, one begins to wonder if you didn’t pick on the slow kids at school. The slow rich kids.
2. You ordered wine at Maggiano’s? Really??
3. If you insist on continuing this tour of tastelessness, I’d like to recommend you include Fazoli’s (only because they seem to do at least equal quality to all these places at take out prices) and Brio at Town Square, where I was shocked–shocked!–to get a very good rissotto.
4. I think you’re being unkind to Texans in the culinary department. Their barbecue and tacos are both so damn good that why they heck would they care about any other food?
Hi John,
Thanks for stopping by the restaurant! I just stumbled on your blog via Twitter search. You certainly write an entertaining (and thorough) review.
I am truly surprised that your meal did not meet our high standards. I’d like to personally invite you to stop by again and visit with our Executive Chef, Anthony Psyk, for a tour of the kitchen and a second taste. I think you’ll see first hand that while our scratch-kitchens prepare a lot of food each day for our many guests, it is anything but mass produced. We take great pride in every dish we serve, and in the talent of our executive chefs.
Again, thanks for stopping by. We hope to hear from you soon.
Cheers,
Michael
Hey J
I agree…. nice staff (and at least clean bathrooms)! When are we doing lunch?
lisa
Maggiano’s was created by Lettuce entertain you in Chicago, then sold to Brinker.
And who sticks to Alfredo sauces? Except Americans, that is. :)
I feel you’re shooting fish in a barrel with these reviews.
It was started by Lettuce entertain you in Chicago. I went to my first Maggiano’s circa 1991, and I seem to recall them opening way back in the late 80s in the city.
I agree with Steve, this is shooting fish in a barrel.
How about more news like, what is taking the place of charlie trotter in Palazzo? Or, the David Burke location? Or, what will Michael Mina do next in MGM?
Love the reviews and the humor. Keep up the good work!
But how about branching out a bit? There must be “bad” in other ethnic reagons of Vegas – Chinese, Japanese, BBQ, Mexican….
It’s a conundrum: only review nice fancy places and people criticize you for not reviewing “normal” restaurants.
Review too many ordinary restaurants (scathingly as many deserve) and the criticism is that you are just being mean.
It’s no win. But I hear they have great sauces at the Cheesecake Factory :)
Who actually reads these reviews, because their not reviews. Their fables. I find ELV’s humor to be boring and they are no Mark Twain.
The pictures alone, is the review. Horrid salad, horrid pasta, horrid stomach ache.
Maybe you should switch to silent reviews; pictures. Regardless of what you say, the pictures speak volume.
I enjoy the tearing up of restaurants, but I would like to see a focus. Who goes to an Italian restaurant and orders apple crisp and iceber lettuce salad with bacon bits and avaocado. Real Italian, uh?
I would like to see the focus of meatballs, parms, tirmisu’s, shittiest ass scampis and stuffed shitty ass button mushrooms; and what hacks are hacking it up the best, meaning the worst. I really get a kick out of these Italian joints serving food from the 1500’s when Catherine De Medici married Henry duc d’Orlean.
Hell the guy above is offering you a tour of the kitchen. You should look for all the FRESH CUTS, pre sliced veggies, already chopped garlic, if they use garlic. Or maybe some liquid eggs, cheap enriched flours, maybe even some sysco pre made dressings, as well cheap blended EVO.
Yeah lots of guest cause the food is good?
Here people, look up the website http://www.brinker.com/. Same hacks cooking consistency are the same ones making onion blossoms at Chilis.
But if the public loves this garbage food so much, common shares of their stock can be purchased under ticker symbol EAT.
bottom line… This place is a cattle house for the average obsese tourist unwilling to venture into places like Mix, Sage, Sirio, RM and unwilling to pay the bill for steak at places like Carnevino, SW, Stripsteak, Nobhill
Little (well-) known fact: Brinker invented the salad bar, as well as the beloved sneeze guard glass that protects grazers from, well, the snot of others. This should explain a lot of about the allure of Maggiano’s.
That being said, if there’s anything to be commended about Maggiano’s from Chicago to Las Vegas to suburban malls across the nation: it’s consistent for those who are familiar with it.
So when Chad and Trixie from Schaumburg, Illinois are fretting about where to go for good Italian in our humble burg (thank you, ELV), and are balking at the prices at Circo or unknowing of why Rao’s is so special, they’ll spot Maggiano’s and find it to be comforting and an oasis in our desert.
And in that sense, the chain restaurant has done its job.
Love the site, and I love the articles. I like reading about your take on restaurants, and which ones to go to and which ones to avoid. You are spot on with your reviews, and I tip my hat to you on that.
And now here’s something we hope you’ll really like:
1. To everyone who is bashing you about the review: If you don’t like the reviews, then why do you come here and read them? These are just his opinions, and you don’t have to like them. But if they trouble you that much, then your choices are to either stop reading this reviews or become a food critic.
2. A guided tour, by a chef named Psyk? Really? “We’ve got all the best ingredients in here. Psyk!” “We care about our customers. Psyk!” It’s like they are trying to tell you that your opinions are important to them – not! I find it funny that this is the name of the person who is supposed to be in charge of the food. Which is he – Psyk!
3. I’ve heard from a few people that Maggiano’s is great. They have all said that the food is wonderful. And then I see the pictures on the site. Boy, the were right. Psyk!
Mr. Breed: Please explain photographs 9 and 10–is that what you consider “high standards?”
Wow. A review that was actually useful. Thanks John.
I love the food and I say keep up the good work
I’m so glad you posted this….I used to love Maggiano’s but the last few times were awful and I will never return. We made the mistake of eating there for Thanksgiving and may I say the turkey tasted like oversalted road kill….in fact, I could probably fetch some road kill and cook it myself and it would taste better…sorry Maggiano’s: Quality over Quantity!!!