'90s Kids Will Remember This Italian Restaurant Chain Where Customers Could Draw On Tables

When I was a kid, the pinnacle of casual Italian cuisine, according to my young palate, was the Olive Garden. Then one day, I was taken to another Italian restaurant that changed my opinion on the matter. This new place felt like stepping into the Italy pavilion at Epcot Center — fancy, authentic-ish, and still approachable to the Nickelodeon crowd. The best part was that I was given crayons and could draw on the table, which was loads of fun in a time before smartphones and tablets. I'm talking, of course, of Romano's Macaroni Grill, the epitome of fancy Italian dining for many '90s kids in the USA.

And I'm not the only millennial who remembers this place fondly. One Redditor recalled "playing drawing games with family members on the [crayon-friendly] tables." Those tables were covered with white butcher paper, and the servers would usually write their names on it. They felt like a big-kid upgrade from the immature (to us) coloring placemats we were given at other restaurants, and playing tic-tac-toe or hangman on them made time fly while waiting for our food, even as I got older.

While some on Reddit remember this place as just being a notch above the competition, and even I can't exactly recall any specific entree, many '90s kids wax nostalgic about the bread (including me). The same Redditor commented that they "remember the amazing [fresh-out-of-the-oven] bread." Another Redditor reminisced about "the bread there being absolutely amazing." The chain's crusty peasant bread was perfumed with fresh rosemary, sprinkled with flaked salt, and made many of us momentarily forget about unlimited breadsticks. Alas, this '90s mainstay seems to be going extinct.

Macaroni Grill was founded in 1988 and sold to Brinker International the following year. At its peak in 2004, Macaroni Grill had 219 restaurants. In 2008, Brinker sold the brand to Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm with only a handful of restaurants in its portfolio, including one of many Mexican chains to avoid – On The Border. Within a year of purchasing the chain, the private equity firm closed 12 restaurants, and between 2009 and 2014, it closed 50 more restaurants before declaring bankruptcy. 

By 2019, there were only 85 remaining locations, and more than half of those closed right after the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2021. There are no more Macaroni Grill restaurants where I live anymore. The Italian restaurant chain is down to just 17 locations in nine states. At least that's what it claims on its website. Other sources have reported that the chain actually has only nine restaurants.

While many saw Macaroni Grill as a slightly better Olive Garden, the latter seemed to have adapted to changing dining trends, including beefing up its takeout business and offering more frequent promotions, like the never-ending pasta bowl. Older sit-down restaurant chains, like Macaroni Grill, have been struggling to evolve. But there might be more opportunities for Millennials to eat, color, and enjoy samples of wine on the horizon. The brand is planning a comeback in 2026, already having opened its first new franchise in 13 years while considering potential new locations in Florida, California, and Texas. In the meantime, we're just going to scour stores for a Macaroni Grill equivalent to Olive Garden's store-bought breadstick dupe.