Buca di Beppo

Being Asian, you eat family style all the time. A few years ago Albuquerque got a Buca di Beppo, which specializes in Southern immigrant Italian food. As I understand, Buca di Beppo translates to Joe's basement. It's great to see that the family style dining has been taken on with another genre of restaurant. Buca in Albuquerque is a reddish stucco building with rock wall accents and a sign of a Buca logo that is similar to original Vegas. It is sort of tacky, but charming at the same time. The layout of the restaurant is not open, but cramped and busy. The walls are covered with interesting photos of the Pope, pop art, and tourist attractions in Italy. The dining areas are separated by odd walkways. Despite the unconventional layout of the restaurant it does have a lot of character.

It was cool to go here because one of my dinner companions, Alisha, used to work at one in California and this provided a different perspective on things. We were seated fairly quickly after we arrived at the restaurant, we did not have enough time to finish our pre-dinner drinks before we were called. Our server was friendly, but the service was just OK. The food did take awhile, but it was a Friday night. We stared dinner with a small apple Gorgonzola salad with a vinaigrette dressing which was great for the four of us to share. We then ordered a Margherita pizza and a Baked Rigatoni. Both of these dishes were good, but not great. The baked Rigatoni had meat sauce with Italian sausage which was good, but the meat was not plentiful. We finished our meal with some espresso.

Overall the meal was good, but not exceptional. I would give Buca a rating of three and a half stars out of five for the average food with the family style novelty.


http://www.bucadibeppo.com/