They emerge almost as soon as the calendar page flips from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1. From my perch on the StairMaster, they are easy to spot, walking apprehensively about the large Wellness Room of the Green Hills YMCA, warily eyeing the elliptical machines, the recumbent bikes, the rowing stations, the burly Nautilus equipment, the bouncy stability balls, the racks of free weights. Damn, I think to myself, rolling my eyes, here we go again. As predictable as Pamela Anderson’s cleavage and Garth Brooks’ comeback tour: The Resolutionists. By the end of the first week of January, they have taken over, trying the patience of those who toil in this room day after day, week after week, month after month. But bless their hearts, by the end of February, a good 75 percent of them are gone like a freight train. Conversely, on the second day of January 2006, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t a Resolutionist to be found in Maggiano’s Little Italy. Not unless these were folks who had resolved to snag a spot on the reality show Biggest Loser and were fattening themselves up for the auditions taking place Jan. 22 at Buffalo Billiards on Second Avenue. (Note to self: one more trip to Maggiano’s and I’m a shoo-in.) But surely, there was not a single person occupying one of the 260 seats in the restaurant’s main dining room who had resolved to lose weight in the new year. If so, they had to realize, the moment a 4-pound bowl of spaghetti with a meatball the size of their head was set down before them, that they were in the wrong place. Hell, even as cautiously and prudently as I tested Maggiano’s fare—and adding an extra 15 minutes on the evil StairMonster—it only took two visits to this fantasy camp for competitive eaters before I had to pull out the Fat Pants, and that made me very cranky. I don’t mind a tight waistband as a day-after consequence of foie gras, triple-cream cheese, lobster risotto or a Prince’s Hot Chicken sandwich. But pulling out the Fat Pants for ho-hum food is not something I would ever do on my own time or dime. But that’s just me. And, judging by the popularity of Maggiano’s Little Italy—a chain that is growing ever larger as New York’s Little Italy shrinks block by gentrified block—I am in the far smaller category of diners who do not equate quantity with quality. Consider the fertile ground in which the seed of Maggiano’s popularity has taken root. Research by various health and nutrition groups indicates that the trend to larger portion sizes began in the 1970s. Initially fueled by the fast-food industry, the practice now permeates fast-casual and family restaurants as well. Combine that with the increasing tendency of Americans to eat out or take out, and you have Exhibits A and B behind our country’s scandalous obesity epidemic. A report published in the American Journal of Public Health found that when ethnic foods are Americanized, portion sizes grow. The American croissant is far bigger and contains about 100 more calories than the French version (which might help explain why, as one book title puts it, French Women Don’t Get Fat). The Mexican quesadilla—not exactly a lightweight to begin with—doubles in calories and size. Bagels and muffins are enormous, three times the standard portion size. And servings of cooked pasta are often nearly five times standard portion sizes. Except at Maggiano’s, where a single order of pasta exceeds even that bloated excess. How do I know? Because I did a little research of my own. Though Maggiano’s reputation for large portions is well-known, my party and I were still stunned at the size of the dishes we were served on our first visit, particularly given the fact that we requested a half-order where possible. Even so, we walked out of the restaurant later that evening with enough leftovers to make a generous-sized dinner for both families the next night. A couple days later, I got a whole order of spaghetti marinara to go, which required two containers. I took those containers to the post office self-service machine and weighed them. Subtracting the weight of the containers, one order of spaghetti weighs about 3 1/2 pounds. At home, I measured by volume: 8 cups of cooked pasta filled my large serving bowl. Even doubling the USDA guideline of a half-cup of cooked pasta per serving, that is eight times the recommended portion size. The rest of the dishes we ordered were consistently super-sized. The whole order of Maggiano’s salad was a veritable meadow; the half-order of linguine with red clam sauce overflowed its large bowl; the half-order of salmon oreganata covered a large oval plate end to end; the lasagna fed two at the restaurant, and two again the following night. At this point, I am either singing to the choir, writing the equivalent of “blah blah blah,” or providing Maggiano’s with the best free advertising they could hope for. So enough. Aside from the Kong-ish portion sizes, how does Maggiano’s Little Italy measure up? The bar/lounge and main dining room are fastidiously designed to resemble family-owned restaurants in Manhattan’s Little Italy, albeit much larger than those cozy little establishments. Dark woods, black-and-white tile floors, red-and-white checked tablecloths and yellowed family photos create a Disneyfied version of the real deal. Seating is comfortable, the ambience is lively and loud, though not uncomfortably so, and service on all my visits was attentive, considerate, well-trained and well-executed. The menu is basic Italian-American, which means baked or sauced pasta, the reason being that most early Italian immigrants to America came from the poorer, southern region of Italy, where the diet relied heavily on inexpensive pasta, a preponderance of tomatoes and locally produced cheese. Several meat, poultry and fish dishes are also offered. The Bombalina platter—bruschetta, baked spinach and artichoke dip, zucchini fritte, onion strings and mushroom ravioli—is a representative sampling of appetizers and can easily be shared by four. We liked the light and crispy zucchini slices, which stand well on their own. Mussels fans will enjoy these plump orbs, but only if you are also quite fond of garlic, many slivers of which floated in the bowl of buttery broth, along with white beans and sun-dried tomatoes. A half-order of any salad is easily shared by two. Our Caesar was mainly tough dark leaves of Romaine, and we failed to uncover more than a scant scatter of the promised crispy prosciutto and bleu cheese under the heaps of iceberg lettuce on the Maggiano salad. A cup of minestrone soup—full of zucchini, onion, celery, carrot, tomato, spinach, ditalini and herbs—improved with a spoonful of fresh-grated Parmesan and would make a fine winter starter. Maggiano’s lasagna is stacked high and dense with cheese and meat or marinara sauce, which like the house salad dressing leans to the sweet side. The chicken Parmesan was four rounds of pounded chicken breast, lightly breaded, golden-fried and topped with sauce and melted mozzarella. Take a turn off the tomato trail with the bowl of farfalle pasta, pulled chicken, sliced asparagus and spinach in a light Parmesan broth. The $29.95 veal chop was an abomination, with four bites of fat for every one bite of meat. Another try resulted in a meaty chop, though not particularly flavorful. The pesto sauce spread on the chicken sandwich was essentially green mayonnaise, the arugula limited to exactly one wilted stem, the bread soft and squishy as Bunny Bread. And there you have it, folks. Brinker’s International—the Dallas-based parent company which proudly boasts 1,500 restaurants under some form of ownership—has successfully applied the same dining concept to Maggiano’s Little Italy as it has to its siblings Chili’s Grill, Romano’s Macaroni Grill, The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina, Big Bowl Asian Kitchen and Rockfish Seafood Grill: big and bland, plenty of bang for the buck. It’s a winning formula for Brinker’s, but in the end the American public is the biggest loser.
