Chain Restaurant Recommendation: Maggiano's Little Italy

The new Hackensack outpost of Maggiano's Little Italy (the facade of which is pictured above) was packed last night when Cheryl and I had dinner there (The Great Depression 2.0 doesn't seem to have hit Bergen County, NJ yet). The only complaint I had when we had dined there last week was that the sponge cake/lady finger part of the tiramisu was a little dry, but it was fine last night. Since Northern New Jersey has a large Italian-American population, there are a lot of local Italian restaurants, but the food at Maggiano's compares favorably with them, and is superior to most of them (granted, some local spots seem to have delegated their cooking to non-Italians). It would be great if the proprietors of some of the sub-par local Italian restaurants had dinner at Maggiano's sometime. The quality of the corporate chain -- Maggiano's is part of Brinker International (NYSE: EAT) -- might shame them into stepping up their games.