Roma's is the neighborhood Italian restaurant at Woodside Plantation. Many of its customers live right here. They sit together as groups of friends and neighbors, nonchalant enough that they don't bother to dress up for dinner.
Informal mien of the clientele notwithstanding, Roma's waitstaff is garbed in smart black outfits and have been well schooled in manners that befit a polite dining room. A couple months ago, our waiter, Jameson Finney, who was then a new employee, shared that he was serving a table of five couples who now wanted separate checks. Mr. Finney weathered that challenge, then served our meal with alacrity. He gladly agreed to present a plate of ravioli in such a way that it (and he) looked good for a photograph.
People visit Roma's to fork into such old-school Italian-style comfort food as lasagna, eggplant parmigiana and spaghetti with meatballs followed by the likes of ricotta cheesecake or spumoni for dessert.
While it is possible to order garlic knots by the dozen or half dozen, a few complementary ones arrive in a basket at the beginning of dinner. Warm, butter-slick and chewy, they are a heavy-duty amuse-bouche and just what's needed to sop up sauce throughout the meal. I use mine to get the last of the champagne vinaigrette from a plate of salad that includes Kalamata olives.
Antipasto features several of those good olives, the salty little black fruits positioned like pistils of a flower surrounded by salami-slice petals. Crowded also with coils of ham and provolone and topped with sliced onions and banana peppers, a small antipasto is enough for two.
You can start a meal with zuppa de mussels or, better yet, make mussels dinner. They come one of two ways: plastered with the kitchen's nubby red sauce, which pairs nicely with the mollusks' sweetness, or in white wine garlic sauce that complements their marine gusto. Both are presented on a bed of precisely-cooked spaghettini.
Pink paste stuffed inside ravioli conveys lobster flavor without the supple feel of intact lobster meat. They come under a spill of gravy laced with chewy strips of sun-dried tomato.
Pizzas have a thin crust and low-rise cornicione (puffy rim). Just about every standard ingredient crowds Roma's top-of-the-line Pizza Supreme. On the other hand, Pizza Margherita is an archetype that includes nothing more than squished plum tomatoes (not sauce), melted mozzarella, minced garlic and a few strips of basil leaf.
Meals do not include an ordinary bread basket, so if garlic knots and pasta were not enough to sate a carb craving, consider dessert of zeppole, which are fried bite-size dough balls tossed in powdered sugar. Or end the evening with Tiramisu, a cool block of chocolate-capped mascarpone cream mounted on a layer of ladyfingers that have been drenched in espresso liqueur.
A dinner house, Roma's does not open until 4pm; but the bill of fare includes inexpensive hot and cold hero sandwiches as well as stromboli baked around sausage and peppers and calzones that enclose melted ricotta and mozzarella cheese.
Roma's: 116 Coach Light Way, Aiken, S.C. 803-643-7828. http://romaitalianrestaurant.blogspot.com/
