I have a confession to make before I go any further with this review: My husband and I occasionally visit chain restaurants when we really don't want to put much effort into going out to eat.
OK now that is out of my system, I can continue. We've been to Buca before (visited the location in Columbus probably about 8-10 times with friends for group dinners) so we know the concept and that it's about sharing and all that jazz. We ended up at this location on Sunday night when we were trying to find *gasp* TGI Fridays. Well let me save you a drive to this part of town and tell you that Fridays is no longer there. Anyway, we saw Buca and decided to suck it up and eat there. We had about a five minute wait and then were led back through the kitchen (as you are at any Buca) to our table. We had some confusion with our service because at one point we were told our waitress got a big party and wouldn't be handling our table anymore, and then she did for the rest of our night. Weird.
Unfortunately the food was not as good as we remembered. The cheese garlic bread was cut into squares and wasn't served in a pie shaped. The caesar salad was under-dressed, but as a plus it held up nicely as a leftover for me to have the next night for dinner. Chris thought the chicken parm was not as good as it used to be (we think they changed the recipe or something). My side of fettucini alfredo was good thankfully and heated up nicely on Tuesday night as my dinner. All and all, the food was a major disappointment even for chain restaurant standards!
The bright spot was that for $69 (includes tip) we got four meals out of the food we ordered. Buca was a 2.5 star experience for us, but I'm rounding down to 2 due to not living up to our standards.