Romero’s Italian Restaurant opens in Wheaton with classic pasta menu

Romero’s Italian Restaurant stepped into one of Wheaton’s most familiar dining addresses with a soft opening at 2666 University Boulevard West, the longtime home of Cristina Ristorante Italiano. The rollout began at 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 25, and the restaurant planned an official ribbon cutting for Tuesday, June 3, giving the new place a staged launch instead of a single debut day.

That approach fits the setting. Cristina first opened at the same spot in May 2002 and closed permanently in August 2025 after more than two decades, after the owners chose not to renew the expiring lease. Romero’s is not just opening in a vacant storefront; it is taking over a space that already carries a lot of neighborhood memory, which raises the bar on first impressions and makes continuity as important as novelty.

The menu leans hard into the familiar Italian-American staples that regulars know by heart. The pasta section includes fettuccine Alfredo, spaghetti carbonara, lasagna, ravioli, and cheese manicotti. Seafood plates add shrimp fra diavolo, mussels linguini, and calamari served with spaghetti. The kitchen also is offering pizzas, salads, soups, garlic bread, fried calamari, cannoli, and tiramisu, a lineup that points to a family-restaurant model built for both dine-in meals and carryout orders.

That setup was already in motion months before the first plates left the kitchen. Romero’s appeared before Montgomery County’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services for a December 18, 2025 hearing on a new Class H beer-and-wine license, on-sale only, a sign that the project had been moving through county licensing before the spring opening. As of May 26, the restaurant’s Google listing showed daily hours of 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and early service included both dine-in and carryout.

A first look at the room showed Romero’s leaning into the same straightforward formula the former tenant used so well: complimentary bread at the table, a small red pizza as an appetizer, mussels linguini in white sauce, and chicken Milanese with spaghetti. In a stretch of Wheaton where the address already means something to diners, Romero’s is betting that the safest move is the right one, keeping the old Italian comfort cues while putting a new name on the door.