Mario's Restaurant

I felt like I stepped back in time about 50 years when I entered Mario's Restaurant in Ormond Beach lately, but the food was good, the service attentive, and the portions huge!  


 We arrived on a very stormy and rainy Saturday evening. They were not very busy, but still had a fair flow of traffic. We were promptly seated and a drink order taken. Our wine arrived in due time and we were hungry so we ordered.

 Our meals each started with a salad, and it was a very good salad, nice and fresh and cold. It was served on a chilled metal plate. The plate itself had a place to put in a container of dressing, but for some reason the dressing was just placed on top of the salad. Curious. But the salad itself was very good with nice fresh lettuce, some tomato, egg, and etc. It was very good and very refreshing.

For his main course my friend Tommy had the Chicken Parm. Holy smokes! Talk about a huge portion! Three good sized chicken breasts were covered with parmesan cheese and red sauce and grilled nice and hot. The chicken was nice and tender, the parm was nicely browned. It was a good dish. It was served with a side of penne with red sauce, but that was really unnecessary. The portion was huge, he actually had a total of three meals out of it, eventually.


Our meals were accompanied by bread, and lots of it. One was a garlic bread, that was very good. But the best was a somewhat rustic chubby baton of a nice whole wheat bread, nice and fresh and warm. Very good bread.

For my meal I had the chicken marsala. The marsala was just a bit on the sweet side for me, but still it was very good. The chicken was nice and tender, and the sauteed mushrooms gave the dish a nice earthy flavor. This was very good. And the portion was large, I ended up taking half of it home for another meal on another day.


Overall, I enjoyed my meal here. It was good Italian comfort food, not a lot of pretention, but good food done well and served in large portions. The restaurant itself probably has not changed much since it was opened in the 50's, but it was nice and clean. I'd eat here again, definitely. I can see why it has so many favorable votes on Urbanspoon.com!