Felicia S.
Yelp
This review is for a dine-in dinner experience. We did not try the pizza.
Still on the hunt for a decent lasagna at a casual restaurant in Knoxville, we decided to give Bella Roma a shot. If you like cheese, you're in luck.
First, when you walk in, you walk up to the counter and you'll be told to choose any table, read the menu that's at the table, and then go back up to the counter to order. You pay when you order, which is weird because how do you decide on a tip when all you did was seat yourself, not get any real answers when asking about menu items, and walked to the counter to order your own food? Then you have to get your own drink from the machine. There's not really any kind of table service except when they bring your food. Newsflash ... the "service" isn't worth 20%.
The food came out fairly quickly and each of our entrees came with 3 breadsticks each, served in to-go containers. My husband also ordered chicken wings from the appetizer menu, which came out at the same time as the rest of the meal. That makes sense for a to-go order, but for dining in, it's nice to get the appetizer first.
My daughter got the meatball sub. It was so overloaded with cheese, she had to pull much of it off and couldn't eat the whole thing. The ratio of meatball to cheese to too-large bun was way off. She said it also could have used more sauce.
My husband ordered lasagna and he liked it. It was a smaller portion than I imagined it would be. (He ate his three breadsticks and two of mine to fill up.) It came topped and overloaded with cheese, hiding the smaller size of the portion of lasagna.
I had eggplant rollatini (they don't call it that - they call it eggplant roll ups). There was so much cheese I was sick to my stomach after going home. The dish was tasty, but again too heavily loaded down with cheese. There wasn't enough sauce to even dip in the breadsticks.
If you get entrees, order a side of sauce for the breadsticks, which are soft and warm. Very nice.
The flavor was good but I can't get past the heavy cheese situation here. That combined with the lack of service and I'd suggest ordering a pizza and taking it home. You may have a better experience, especially if you're crazy for cheese. I'd say 2.5 stars.