Romano's Macaroni Grill review: Service

March 8, 2020. Milpitas, CA
We used to go here quite often and service and food were much better then. What has happened to this restaurant?!? We went to Milpitas to celebrate our grandson's birthday. There were 11 of us with reservations at 4:45pm. We were not greeted by anyone until 5:10pm. Our drink orders were finally taken. Water and tea came out within a few minutes but the wine never came. One of our people had to go to the bar to get them from the bartender that had just come out of the restroom after smoking his marijuana. We waited and waited for our salads that we had to pay extra for (and was never offered refills). They came 3 minutes before our dinners so we didn't have time to enjoy them. When our dinners finally came out an hour later they were luke warm. Some of us had ordered off the meat menus and they came out 95% pasta with very little meat and vegetables. I really don't like paying $20 plus for a plate of pasta! The server came with TWO dessert menus for 11 people to ask if we wanted dessert. He took one person's order and walked off. I had to go chase him down for the rest of the orders. There were very few customers in the restaurant but quite a few employees that did pretty much nothing but stand around talking and laughing with each other. When the bill came we paid with 2 credit cards which were both over charged and it took quite a while to get it straightened out. We're not sure if our server had never served before or if he had a different kind of problem. Through all of these problems we never saw a manager. Does Romano's not care about customer service and food quality anymore or are you just out for the big bucks?!? I know that these days restaurants demand that patrons pay the servers wages through tips of 15 to 25%. Years ago we used to tip according to how good the service was. It was NOT mandatory. What the hell is going on in this country?!?!? Well our server got less than ten percent. We won't be back.