Maggiano's Little Italy

Oak Brook, Illinois, United States

Maggiano's Little Italy is a chain of American-Italian restaurants. This location is located in the Oakbrook shopping center (a beautiful outdoor mall).

Maggiano's offers a "family style" menu for parties of four or more (and required for parties of 10 or more). With the family style menu, your group chooses two appetizers, two salads, two groups of two entrees (four entrees total), and two desserts. Each set of foods are brought to your table in large quantities, and you can serve yourself at your leisure. If you run out of any items, they can bring you more at your request. It's like an all-you-can eat, but they bring the food to you. At a cost of $23.95 per person, this may not be a great cost-saving dinner, but it's quite a bit of fun, and it allows you to try a number of dishes that you wouldn't get to try ordinarily.

In each category, there are between 6 and 20 different items to choose from - there's quite a bit of selection.

Dress

You don't need to get too dressed up - shorts and a t-shirt is too casual. Men might want to wear nice jeans (or other nice pants) and a button shirt.

Cost

The family-style dinner is $23.95 per adult, or $13.95 per child.

Items Ordered

Appetizers

Bruschetta

Bruschetta

The Bruschetta was mostly seasoned tomato slices with a few pieces of cheese on top of bread. It was enjoyable, but not the best I've had.

Barb's Spinach & Artichoke al Forno

Barb's Spinach & Artichoke al Forno

This was a great appetizer. It consisted of cheese mixed with spinach, and baked. The spinach cooked, and the cheese melted. The spinach and cheese mixture was eaten on top of a thin bread slice, and was really excellent.

Salads

Maggiano's Salad

Maggiano's Salad

This was a typical salad - it was mostly lettuce. I didn't think it was anything extraordinary.

Chopped Salad

Chopped Salad

The chopped salad tasted very similar to the Maggiano's Salad. Order one or the other - not both (they're too similar).

Main Course - Pastas, Entrees, and Side Options

Four Cheese Ravioli

Four Cheese Ravioli, Pesto Alfredo Sauce

The four cheese ravioli was quite good. They were fairly large noodles; approximately 10-15cm in length, and contained a good amount of cheeses. The cheese itself was fairly plain flavored.

Garlic Shrimp Linguine

Garlic Shrimp Linguine

The garlic shrimp linguine was fairly plain linguine with a few shrimp and tomato pieces. I didn't feel that it was worth the extra $2/person as part of the family style dinner - there were many alternative choices that would probably have been more enjoyable than the garlic shrimp linguine. This dish wasn't bad - it was quite good - but for what it was, it wasn't anything special.

Salmon with Lemon & Herbs

Salmon with Lemon & Herbs

The salmon tasted too much like fish, so I didn't enjoy it. (I only like my salmon when the fish flavor is well hidden). From what other salmon-lovers said of this fish, it was quite good.

Chicken Parmesan

Chicken Parmesan

This chicken was really quite good, one of the better entrees. It was breaded, and covered with a melted cheese.

Dessert

Tiramisu

Tiramisu

This was the best Tiramisu I have ever had. Since this was ordered as part of the family style dinner, we were able to request multiple Tiramisu's - we enjoyed three of them. It was delicious. If you are dining at Maggiano's Little Italy, this is a dessert not to be missed.

Chocolate Zuccotto Cake

Chocolate Zuccotto Cake

This layered chocolate cake was good, but not nearly as good as the Tiramisu. I am usually a huge chocolate cake fan, but this was just "pretty good". The Tiramisu was excellent. The cake was quite heavy; it was more of a fudge cake than a mousse cake.