Restaurant review-Mia's Italian Restaurant

Michael and I like to go out during the week instead of on weekends for our date nights, often because better deals can be had during the week, and it's a lot less crowded. I have limited tolerance when it comes to waiting for food so the quicker I can get seated, the better. :) We decided to try a brand new restaurant in Lawrence called Mia's, because ever since I saw Eat Pray Love last night I was dying for some pasta! Mia's is in the old Zig & Mac's location and has really transformed the decor. Instead of a sports bar with walls of tvs, Mia's has drawn upon the stereotypical "Italian Restaurant" theme, complete with red checkered tablecloths, pictures of grapes and Italian landscapes on the wall, and Frank Sinatra in the background. I guess I would really call Mia's Italian-American, in the same vein as Paisano's or Olive Garden.

The Good:

The service. Our waitress, Ashley, was outstanding, very attentive without becoming intrusive. We never had to wait for refills on our drinks and she offered recommendations when I was trying to decide between two dishes. She really went out of our way to make sure we were taken care of, and that was great.

The Not-so-Good:

The food. Sadly. I want to love Mia's, I do, but I just can't. We started with mozzarella sticks and a salad. The mozz sticks were very tasty, but how can you really screw up fried cheese? Michael says he could make the same thing at home. The cheese was gooey and it had a nice crunch factor, which I love. Mia's gives you free breadsticks, which were pretty good. I enjoyed the olive oil and vinegar blend for dipping, which was prepared tableside.

The salad, however, was awful. It was just plain iceberg lettuce with one pitiful little tomato slice and 3 olives topped with parmesan cheese. It came with their "house italian vinaigrette" which tasted like just oil...very bland with no spice or anything for flavor. I was expecting a dressing like you would get at Olive Garden and it was just not there at all. The salad could be much improved with a mix of lettuces, perhaps some romaine, more veggies, and some oomph to the dressing.


For entrees, I ordered shrimp with vodka cream sauce in shell pasta. It was decent enough, no complaints really. Michael ordered a KC strip steak, which came with a side of pasta. He chose penne with marinara sauce. He salted his steak because it was so under seasoned. I have *never* seen him do that, ever, to a piece of meat at a restaurant. I guess Mia's intent might have been to mask the lack of flavoring with the accompanying marsala mushroom sauce, but because Michael does not eat mushrooms, he didn't use the sauce. It was cooked to his temperature preference (rare) but didn't have any juices as steaks of that temp normally do, which we thought was a little strange.



Overall:

It was fine. A couple of misses, a few fairly decent things to eat. But the thing is, why settle for just 'okay' when there are restaurants here that make AMAZING Italian food? I'm speaking specifically of The Basil Leaf Cafe, and have heard really good things about 715 and Genovese too. Service was great, but we will not go out of our way to eat here again unless we hear they have revamped their food. Maybe it's growing pains as they get settled (I think they've only been open for a couple of weeks), and if that's the case, I hope it gets better soon, for their longevity's sake.