Amongst all the excitement of new restaurants swarming to Flower Mound and the surrounding area, we really wanted to feature one of Flower Mound’s original restaurants – a place that has been an anchor to our community for the past 30 years.
This week we joined Mike Salerno and his staff at Salerno’s Italian Restaurant off FM 2499 in Flower Mound for some incredible home style Italian cuisine.
Thirty years ago, Mike and his cousin, Morris, decided to go into the restaurant business together with the monetary support of their Grandma and Grandpa Salerno. With nothing but a gut feeling, they settled on their location in Flower Mound and have been working to bring delicious Italian family recipes to people like us ever since.
When you step into Salerno’s, you instantly pick up on that family-like atmosphere. There are regular diners everywhere you turn who engage openly and freely with the staff. There are even regular bar patrons Mike refers to as his “Cheers Crowd” who come for Happy Hour nearly every day to catch up with each other and enjoy drinks off of Salerno’s newly extended bar menu.
And there’s no doubt that each dish served is made-to-order and is created with the utmost care and attention to detail. This is food I am willing to wait for!
And with that, I’m so excited to tell you about the delicious meal we enjoyed!
We started off with some of their delicious bread coated with wonderful Italian herbs and garlic.
And I ordered some crab claws as an appetizer which come served in their famous Mogia Sauce. Mogia is a family recipe that contains olive oil, vinegar, Italian herbs and garlic and is then cooked in the sun for two days to allow the flavors to marinate. And they serve it on several of their dishes – providing a light and fresh quality to a wide variety of options.
And if you order off the Lunch Menu, you’ll be served one of their awesome soups or salads. The house salads come stocked with plenty of great ingredients and the House dressing is incredibly creamy and flavorful. And the Caesar salads are great too with a wealth of fresh Parmesan cheese and a wonderful Caesar dressing mixed with the fresh greens. And we didn’t try any of their soups but I’m fairly confident those are awesome as well.
For entrees, we each tried to order off a different part of the menu so we could really give you a great glimpse into what Salerno’s offers.
Traci ordered from the low-carb section of the menu with the Chicken Lillian which is chicken served over blanched spinach and artichoke hearts. She said she didn’t even miss having pasta because the spinach was blanched to provide the perfect texture with the chicken! (In addition to a low-carb section, Salerno’s also offers gluten-free menu items for those of you who love pasta but can’t enjoy pastas with gluten.)
Kari went traditional Italian and ordered the Baked Ziti which was served with a creamy tomato sauce and was coated in delicious cheese. The pasta was cooked to the perfect al dente and it had a great depth of flavor to it.
And (you all will be proud of me) I ordered one of their most famous dishes – Denise’s Chicken Mogia Salad. It’s their most popular salad and is basically an amped up house salad topped with hot Mogia and chicken. It was so incredible and surprisingly filing! I had to bring a lot of it home with me!
And then the chefs treated us to a plate of some of their most popular desserts – including Grandma’s Chocolate Pie, bread pudding, Tiramisu and a cannoli. Everything was incredible but the bread pudding was our absolute favorite. It was covered in a great caramel-type sauce and was so moist… we literally fought over who got to have the last bite.
We had such a great meal with the people of Salerno’s and it was such a treat to sit down and talk to Mike about the love he has for his restaurant and the people who dine with them. If you’ve lived here for years and you’ve never been or haven’t been in a while, you need to go here! And if you’re new to the area, you also need to go here! It’s a wonderful family-friendly environment where you can enjoy some awesome food.
So, head out this weekend to chow down with Mike and his staff. Or you can head over on Monday to enjoy their ALL YOU CAN EAT LASAGNA! special. It’s unlimited lasagna, salad and bread for just $7.49 a person – I’d say that’s a pretty awesome deal.
Let us know what you think of this Flower Mound establishment when you go and don’t forget to tell Mike hello from the Jay Marks Team!
Eat hearty, Foodies!
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