We checked out The Living Room on it's opening weekend and it was packed. Luckily we managed to score a table pretty quickly in this very cool wine bar/restaurant which looks great and had a good atmosphere going on.
Our party ordered a couple bottles of well priced wines along with a bruschetta selection. I then went on to have a panini sandwich was was OK, nothing stunning but perfectly OK. If you have been to Postino in Arcadia you will recognize the menu immediately and thats a very good thing! Small plates with interesting ingredients is the order of the day here and I am personally thrilled that someone realized this concept would work down in the East Valley. Postino is my favorite restaurant in the Valley but sometimes you just don't want to schlep all the way up to Arcadia for a couple of glasses of wine and an appetizer.
First impressions on a restaurant's opening weekend are always hard as you know they will improve as the weeks go by. There was a DJ on the night we were there that was intrusive to our conversation and added nothing to the evening (let's just hope that was a gimmick for the opening weekend). The wine selection was excellent but the food needed just a little tweaking. My sandwich was OK but could have been a lot better, not as crisp on the outside as you would normally like a Panini.
In the end I am very grateful to the owners of The Living Room for bringing this type of non-chain, wine-centric dining experience to Chandler where were are drowning in average restaurants. I will be back here for sure and will likely end up as a regular!