Munch: Roman’s Kitchen

A feed for fuck-all

Roman’s Kitchen

What: Pasta

Price: $10.00 - $12.90

When: 11:30am—11:00pm, Monday—Sunday

Filling value, but just a bit sad. 

⭐⭐

Roman’s Kitchen, on upper Cuba Street and also High Street in Lower Hutt, is on the cutting-edge of efficient, modern-day food production and has gamed the food-delivery market for all that it’s worth. They operate under at least eleven monikers on Uber Eats, which all have slight variations or excerpts of the same menu, while competing with each other by offering meals at wildly different prices. It seems like an odd marketing strategy that surely must be a bigger administration headache than it’s worth. Nevertheless, squeezed together into one kitchen at 245 Cuba Street, there is: All about loaded Fries; Milano Pasta & Steak; Mac N Cheese Box and Mac N Cheese Box2 (electric boogaloo); Pasta Italiana and the hit sequel Pasta Italiana2, which offer pasta dishes at twice the price of their sibling-competitors, but with a Buy 1, Get 1 Free deal (go figure). The list continues with Steak On Pasta; Pasta O Pasta; the oddly sexual Take it, Cheesy; Signature Steak House; and, finally, Romans Kitchen. Out of all of these, Pasta O Pasta seemed to have the cheapest menu, selling a red sauce spaghetti bowl for $14. 

That still doesn’t beat going in person, however. The in-store menu lists that same pomodoro pasta for $10, while the most expensive pasta bowl tops out at $12.90. Roman’s effectively makes pasta with either a tomato sauce, a cream sauce, or a creamy pesto, plus a variety of additions like mushrooms, salmon, shrimp, chicken, etc. The service is efficient and impersonal—all touch-screen ordering systems and flashing signs for Kool-Aid—but the pasta was hot and the lone chef working in the kitchen passed me my meal with a cheerful smile. 

I ordered two bowls, the spaghetti in tomato and a smoked salmon cream sauce with penne. Both were still steaming by the time I got home and, even though the sauces were quite thin, the containers held and didn’t spill in my bag, which I was grateful for. Both containers were also hefty; you get a solid amount of food for the price. 

The smoked salmon penne was, from the get-go, far too salty. The sauce itself was overseasoned and then the pieces of salmon were salty too, meaning there was little reprieve. There was also far too much sauce for the amount of pasta. The pasta itself was overcooked, but the tender, torn slices of smoked salmon were nice, reminding me for a flash of the salmon and pea pasta I used to eat growing up. There were also a few chunks of charred broccoli hidden in the sauce, which were a welcome surprise; I’m a sucker for charred broccoli. (I had the other half of this bowl for dinner that night, with a handful of extra pasta to soak up the excess sauce, as well as some sautéed green beans with a squeeze of lemon, which really balanced out the meal). 

The tomato sauce spaghetti was interesting, with a surprisingly deep sweetness as if it had been slow-cooked, and a little hint of vinegar acidity that suggested a distant relation to ketchup. None of this, however, stood up to an overall undercurrent of soapiness. Now, I’m not one to claim that coriander or any other herb tastes like Jif, but there was something about the mix of thyme, oregano and rosemary in this sauce that brought to mind bubbles and scrubbing brushes. That aside, it was again of soggy pasta swimming in too much sauce. While home-cooking is the Achilles’ Heel of this column that I’ve simply ignored, I just can’t recommend this dish when you could remake it with a can of sauce and dried spaghetti for less than half the price. 

Roman’s Kitchen is an interesting kitchen to review, and not only because of its Split-style digital identity crisis. Overall, it’s a reasonably cheap and sizably dense amount of food. However, its cheapest offer is arguably too bare-bones. The plain tomato sauce pasta is so simplistic, it feels ridiculous to pay $10 for. Instead, the added ingredients that you can get for a dollar or two more make the more expensive options on their menu feel like better value, especially the ones offering chicken, salmon, and shrimp, as meat is often a premium addition. All of this is details, however, that pale before the fact that it all just wasn’t very good. There are certainly tastier options for the same value. As the base of a meal that I might bulk out with more pasta or some extra ingredients, Roman’s pasta is alright, but it still won’t be seeing the top half of my list. 

Have you got a go-to meal deal that other students should know about? Is there somewhere iconic that I’ve overlooked so far? Send me something to chew on at: guy@salient.org.nz.