Roman Cucina
16595 Pacific Coast Hwy
Sunset Beach
562-592-5552
Roman Cucina has three locations. I went to their Costa Mesa location on a Monday night and had the calamari, $8.95 and a couple $5 martini!!! The calamari is very fresh and crispy. They are also huge. These are among the best calamari I've had. What I didn't like is the red sauce. It's basically a pasta sauce. Come on now, make a cocktail sauce. It's not that hard. But overall the calamari is a very good appetizer. Service was very good. Server was nice and helpful.
I just went to the Sunset Beach location for dinner. I had the chicken parmigiana, $13.95. All dinners come with a salad. The salad is romaine lettuce with onions and cucumbers topped with Italian dressing. You don't get a choice of dressing. The salad was fresh and the dressing was very mild for an Italian dressing, not tangy or bitter.
The chicken parmigiana was a huge piece of white meat chicken, covered with mozzarella, that was sitting on penne pasta. The penne was cooked just right. The red sauce was a bit spicy but nothing special. I thought the chicken was some kind of processed chicken. It was lightly breaded but the texture just didn't taste right. I thought this entree was a good value but I wouldn't get it again. The chicken just didn't taste right.
Service was good. We had a party of 16 but we didn't lack for anything and we got our orders quickly. Almost too quickly. He didn't give us much time to eat our salads. Our entrees came when most people were half way done with their salads.
I didn't care for the Sunset Beach location because it's small, crowded and noisy as hell. Wednesday nights are free corkage night, so that's why it was so crowded. But do wine drinkers have to yell when they talk? When you have to yell at the person across from you, to hear it's not a good thing. I would enjoy Roman Cucina in Sunset Beach on a different, less crowded night.
I like Roman Cucina and would go back but never on a Wed night.
