Tony Roma’s
Shanghai Center
1376 Nanjing Xi Lu
Shanghai, China
PRICE: ????
RATING:

Oh how I freakin’ LOVE Tony Roma’s! I love it anywhere and everywhere in the world and I’m glad that the quality is still consistent even in their Shanghai branch. The interior is not fancy. In fact, it’s a little worn and quite cheap-looking. But I could care less about that… because it’s just the FOOD I’m after.

This time, my girl friend and I came for their lunch sets, which are a great deal. Their regular menu is significantly overpriced, and needs to be reduced by at least 30%. However for lunch, it’s much more reasonable, though the portions are also obviously reduced accordingly.

I’m impressed at how the lunch set comes with a drink (we chose iced tea) and also a soup (the daily soup was a vegetable tomato soup). I appreciated that the iced tea came with syrup served separately, so you can sweeten to taste. The soup was actually really good, albeit a little watery. The tart flavour of the tomato base combined well with the soft chunky vegetables inside. Lovely comfort food.

The first main of the lunch set was the Ribs and Fried Shrimp, with coleslaw and fries. I was surprised to see three tiny ribs on the plate. I was expecting around 8-10 ribs, since they were mini-sized. Very disappointing, I hate enforced diets 🙁 Even more sad was the fact that their ribs were freakin delicious. Soft, tender, and beautifully flavoured with a rich, smokey BBQ sauce. The Fried Shrimp were 4 mini-sized shrimp as well, not chunky large ones as I was expecting. They were generous with their fries and bowl of coleslaw though – except we know both are cheap to make 😉 The fries and coleslaw were enough for this to be considered a reasonably filling lunch, but you’d be mighty annoyed if you, like me, was expecting something a little more hefty on the meat side.

The other main we had was the Beef Cheddar Grille Sandwich, with coleslaw and fries. Let me be clear – this was the SOLE reason I insisted we go to Tony Roma’s 😛 I read on SmartShanghai that it was “a very real, very fatal threat” and would “ambush your heart”.

The person who wrote that must have a tiny appetite for a guy, or was a girl 😛

IT IS NOT BIG, AT ALL!!! IT IS NOT THAT UNHEALTHY!!!!

Let me explain – it’s a reasonably-sized sandwich. It could’ve been bigger, as just the one sandwich would not fill me, even for lunch. Yes, my appetite is big, but not THAT big. I can’t fathom why that person said they couldn’t get through “the second half” of the sandwich? It’s easy to eat the whole thing, and still wish it was bigger 🙂

And I also didn’t find it that unhealthy. Sure, it has more calories than a lettuce leaf, but nothing extravagant and I would consider it about the same # of calories as any other lunch I would eat, nothing “heart attack” inducing.

But, that said, it is completely delicious. SmartShanghai are spot on – it’s Tony Roma’s best sandwich 🙂 I love the thin slices of Ciabatta bread (don’t like it when the bread is thick, it’s just filler, please add more ingredients instead!) and the sirloin steak was sliced thinly and utterly juicy. It’s smothered in delicious melted cheese and topped with crunchy, tasty onion rings as well as a squirt of spicy mayo dressing. OH MAN IT IS GOOOOOD!!!!!

Not completely full/satisfied yet, we decided on the Cookie Skillet for dessert. It was basically a giant cookie in a cast iron saucepan, served warm with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. There was some fake chocolate-tasting fudge on top, I would’ve preferred proper melted chocolate, but the cookie was DELICIOUS. Warm, moist, fudgey. It was decadence and the warm cookie was paired beautifully with the cold creamy vanilla ice cream. Such bliss!! I’d get this again anytime.

My previous review at Tony Roma’s, for their dinner menu
My friend’s review at Diningsecretary.com

Complimentary bread – curiously, they gave us ONE roll between the 2 of us?

Delicious vegetable soup and iced tea

Ribs and Shrimp with coleslaw and fries

Beef Cheddar Grille Sandwich with coleslaw and fries

A better shot of the cheesy goodness :)~

Cookie skillet!!!

Really soft fudgy cookie with a very generous portion of vanilla ice cream