Buca di Beppo

Reviews 5

TI

Tiffany Cheung

Definitely havent been missing much by not trying Buca di Beppo when I had many chances, nor will I be returning to any Buca di Beppo locations anytime soon. Buca di Beppo specializes in housing large parties, making big bucks off of customers ordering the large sizes of their dishes; I came with a party of 5 other people, all of us pretty hungry and yet we still ordered three small entrees and two small appetizers. I felt like the server really tried to push us to order large sizes, and seemed a bit deflated because we decided on small. I really think they encourage people to order large sizes of their dishes because the prices would be much more worth it than ordering a small - for example the fried calamari is $13.99 for a small, but $18.99 for a large; of course it would be more worth your money to order a large. I dont know how much more food they give you, but it is not cheap to order a small portion size. Everything definitely adds up. I feel like Buca tries to bank on the "neat" posters, pictures of the family members, weird decorations as an appeal to draw back customers. I thought it was a bit too much. There wasnt any order, nor was there taste (in my opinion) and it just seemed so cluttered. I saw a big round table with a man in the middle of the turnabout which could be interesting at first, but would weird me out if I was eating and he was in front of me watching me eat. Overall I just found the atmosphere of Buca quite tacky. At the same time, the wait staff seemed to be more interested in chatting with each other than helping us. We had to ask for sets of utensils more than once to different waiters because our waitress could not be found. And when we wanted a few boxes, she disappeared so we had to flag down somebody else. As for the food - I really dont see how it stands out from other restaurants. We had ordered the fried calamari and the mozzarella garlic bread (which was recommended by our server). Nothing special about the garlic bread. I think Ive eaten better ones that were frozen and I toasted up in a toaster oven. The fried calamari didnt really appeal to me either. The calamari bits were so small. I had better at Kabuki. It wasnt bad, but definitely not worth the 14 bucks. For our entrees, we had ordered the spicy chicken rigatoni and the shrimp fra diavolo. They both tasted exactly the same, both spicy except that one dish had chicken and the other didnt. That was all I could make out (besides the different pasta they had used). We also ordered a small Spicy Arrabbiata pizza. That was the best of the meal. Even though the pizza was extremely oily and nothing out of the ordinary, it was decent. And we had a tiramisu for dessert - too full to even finish it, but it was quite tasty. I liked the overall taste of it and it did end the dinner on a good note. The server had gone around to all the tables with a huge model of the desserts to show us what it would entail. Looked great, but also looked way too much! Overall dinner was really expensive and much too heavy. tl;dr nothing out of the ordinary. I would not recommend eating here, but if you do find yourself at a Bucas, to order a pizza and dessert.

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Amber Luallen

Planning my moms 60th Birthday I called here on Thursday nov. 10th at 4pm and had asked out much valet parking would be. The woman on the phone told me valet was free with validation from the restaurant. I told all 16 of my guests this. I arrived on Saturday to find out that was not the case. They were not willing to honor what the lady on the phone had told me and I had to pick up the tab for $8 s person at the end of the night. Also I had asked if it would be alright to get there early to set up decoratons, they said no problem, I could absolutely have access to the table early to do so. ALSO not the case. I arrived a half hour early to wait a half an hour before I could set up the decorations. To top it off we werent sat until 15+ minutes AFTER our reservation. I was so embarrassed that our gueats who were all 60+ had to stand and wait that long due to the waiting area being so crowded. I am so disappointed and will never be hosting a party here again. I am astounded at the amount of disappointment Ive experienced with his place. UPDATE: we were finally seated 30 minutes after our reservation time. Mitch our server was incredibly kind and tried so hard to make up for the experience. Also Zach the manager comped us some extra appetizers and tried very hard to make it a better experience as well. It was all very appreciated and a good night. Again though, due to the prior problems we will most likely not be back.

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Roy Rojas

“I just want to say, I’ve read some of the reviews about Buca Di Beppo and it’s hard to believe the negatives… Our experience at Buca’s in Pasadena is a huge thank you for making our daughters graduation very enjoyable. From the start in coordinating our event with Lydia, she made the process easy. On our scheduled day, the food was absolutely delicious, all the staff including the kitchen, friendly and professional. Our family and friends fully enjoyed themselves. My hats off to the manager Wesley for accepting our group (Approx. 47) in earlier than scheduled. He went beyond in providing excellent service. He assigned his staff, Kaitlynn, Emmanuel and Jeorge to our group which provided outstanding service. This staff worked so smoothly to make it all happen. For a few of our family and friends it was their first time at Buca’s and they expressed to us on how great the food and service was. I greatly appreciate the service you provided. We will all remember for a long time and definitely return…..Thank you.“

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Brian Baer

We made a reservation and were seated at least a half an hour after we were quoted, and at that point they offered to seat us outside in the cold or at a table in the extremely noisy "kitchen" which is essentially a table in a hallway by the kitchen on the way to the real seating. After choosing outside we were then served by the least pleasant waiter I can recall being served by who wouldnt even smile and whom I had to ask to bring the bread. The uninspiring shrimp pasta had a hair in it, which the staff took back and to their credit didnt charge us, but that unfortunately leaves us without the take home food that is kind of the point of going to this restaurant. Feeling somewhat guilted into dessert in order to pay something for the experience we had the chocolate cake which is extremely overpriced and is worse than most cake from any grocery store for one tenth the price. In summation, avoid this place.

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Rami Apelian

I made a reservation for Sunday, January 3, 2015 at 6:30pm for 5 people on OpenTable. The restaurant was accepting reservations in 15 minute intervals from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the time of my reservation, which was made at 6:00pm on the same day. We arrived at the restaurant at 6:25pm and were told by the hostess that there is "a bit of wait as we are running behind on reservations." I informed her that a hungry 4 year-old was part of our group and I asked her to quantify "a bit of a wait." After hemming and hawing, I forced her to pin down a time and she told me it would be an additional 20-30 minutes wait. I told her we wouldnt wait as we had a reservation. She promptly canceled my reservation on the OpenTable system and we were forced to find a meal at another restaurant. -1 star for not honoring the reservation -3 stars for letting a child go hungry

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