Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Gino's Italian Restaurant

1701 S Mays St Ste B
Round Rock, TX 78664

Phone: (512) 218-9922

Hi, Laura here.

This being my first post, I feel the need to begin with a little background information. I work in Round Rock. Not quite known for the culinary center of Texas, but I spend a lot of time in the RR, so consequently I eat a lot of meals here. Some places my coworkers drag me to, some places I venture to on my own. Hopefully during the course of this blog, I can detail the good, the bad and the ugly for you.

Let's begin with a little Italian restaurant called Gino's.

First of all, Gino's is in a really fugly strip mall. I've learned not to judge a restaurant by it's location. Afterall, one of my favorite restaurants (Wink) is in a strip, so the outside appearance can be overcome.

Upon arrival, we were seated immediately. The interior is average suburban American/Italian restaurant. Nothing special, but they dress it up with candles and such to make it pleasant enough. The table was greeted with bread and garlic dipping oil. The bread was so-so, but the garlic dipping oil was great. Sadly, this oil was the highlight of my meal.


I ordered the eggplant parmigiana. It was $7.50. Not a bad price, if it had turned out alright. First I received a salad. It was ok, nothing special. Just some lettuce and onion and tomato. It seemed more of a token effort than anything.

Unfortunately, after a long wait, they brought me chicken parmigiana instead of eggplant. Easy mistake to make, and the mistake was corrected quickly enough. However, the eggplant I received was extremely limp and to be honest, kind of disgusting. It did not seem like there was any kind of thought put into it's preparation. Instead, it seemed as thought they slopped some overcooked eggplant onto a plate, added some cheese, and added a HUGE heaping of marinara over it. The spaghetti was overcooked as well. And they made up for it's inadequacy with marinara too.

Not the worst dining experience I've ever had, but I honestly believe if this restaurant was not in extremely close proximity to Dell it would be long gone. If I can possibly steer my coworkers away, I won't be returning.

Laura - 3