Macaroni Grill adds lighter items to the menuMacaroni Grill adds lighter items to the menu

Ron Ruggless

DALLAS Romano's Macaroni Grill has debuted an "Italian Mediterranean" menu of lighter dishes at its 32 restaurants in California with plans to roll out many of the new items to its other locations in August.

The new dishes were introduced at California units on July 1, the same day that a new statewide menu-labeling initiative went into effect.

Macaroni Grill said the Italian Mediterranean menu features seven new dishes and 13 existing items that have been reformulated to cut down on calories, saturated fat and sodium. Calories were reduced by 25 to 69 percent, and saturated fat was reduced more than 70 percent in those items, the chain said.

Ascallop and spinach salad, for example, originally contained 1,270 calories and 27 grams of saturated fat. The revised version has 390 calories and 4 grams of saturated fat. Another dish, the Shrimp Portofino, went from having 1,170 calories and 35 grams of saturated fat to having 560 calories and 14 grams of saturated fat. Other reformulated items include tomato bruschetta, seafood linguine, spaghetti & meatballs and chicken parmigiana

The seven new items are: roasted vegetable antipasti, grilled chicken spiedini, shrimp spiedini, sausage salentino, pollo caprese, lobster spaghetti and lemon pound cake.

Macaroni Grill said the new items -- half of which will be priced at $10 or less -- incorporated such traditional Mediterranean ingredients as extra-virgin olive oil, fresh lemons and lean meats.

"Our vision is for people to savor the great taste of fresh, delicious food and feel good afterwards," said Brad Blum, chief executive of the more than 200-unit Romano’s Macaroni Grill. "Remarkably, our guests significantly prefer the taste of each new Italian Mediterranean recipe."

Blum also said that guest traffic had increased 8 percent over the past six months, when Golden Gate Capital, a private-equity firm in San Francisco and its affiliate Mac Acquisition LLC completed the purchase of 80.1 percent of the casual-dining chain from Brinker International Inc. Brinker retains 19.9 percent ownership and a board position.

Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected].