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| - Ohhhhhhh Bucca.....I had such HIGH expectations for you!
Having attended several large parties at Buca di Beppo I didn't hesitate to book my fiance's birthday party for him and 20 of his closest friends. I was impressed with the banquet manager, Anthony, who helped set up our menu and made suggestions regarding serving size and what to order. He was super helpful and accommodating, calling to offer various seating options and confirming our party in advance. If ONLY he had set the tone for out evening!!
The good: The food was good. Yes, it is a chain, and the food reflects that. But our caprese, fried cheese, stuffed mushrooms, etc, they were delicious. Everyone LOVED the chicken parm and the pasta was great....and the red wine sangria was fabu!
Attention to mistakes was great. Our server noticed we had been delivered a small app when I ordered a large when I didnt actually realized that......she comp'd the small and sent the large out.
The management was good. Yes, I got to meet management! Super duper....allow me to detail the BAD.
The room we were in was ODD. Imagine a long table placed in a room that was literally only 2 feet wider than the actual table on 3 sides. It was like the bat cave of dining rooms. All of the food had to be served from one end, which was kind of an issue with the gigantic hot bowls of steaming pasta. Add to the fact that part of the room doubled as the drink station/serving computers and it was a pretty busy place.
Speed. My sister arrived early to greet guests and had to hunt down a server to order her drink after waiting 20 minutes. Literally. Hunt. Down. I arrived with the birthday boy and ALSO waited 15 for drinks. Water, soft drinks etc all took empty glasses and special requests for refills. The wait between appetizers and dinner was tremendous (ly odd). They served our green beans 5 minutes after we finished our apps but then the meal came 20 minutes later. WTF?
Service. I already mentioned this a bit but if you're still reading you might care about the details. Our server was clearly overworked. I'm not sure how many other tables she had in the restaurant but when you're serving a table of 14-20 I would assume they would be minimal....not in this case apparently. People at the end of our table (GUESTS) ended up busing our dishes. A bus boy eventually showed up to help clear and literally took a plate away from a guest with the fork half way to her mouth. Yes.....SHE WAS STILL EATING!
Our waitress brought out dishes for the cake which I appreciated since I hadnt purchases Buca's B-day cake and sometimes restaurants get weird about that. She left for a few minutes and shortly thereafter one of my guests overheard her complaining about how horrible our table was!!!!!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY??????? I pretty much lost my temper at that point and ended our meal prematurely. While waiting for management I overheard not one, but TWO other servers complain about their tables (as I mentioned we were seated in the drink station area.....so I guess they were breakin' it down in there).
Management was extremely apologetic and polite although he obviously had doubts about my complaints. I'm going to choose to believe his doubts were related to his staff having an 'off' night as they are usually totally awesome? And to be honest I was soooooo angry by this point I wasnt able to detail the majority of my issues. There were certainly moments of greatness (ie the appetizer issue) when they demonstrated an understanding of good service. They took care of a large percentage of our check (which I wasn't expecting) but I completely appreciated since I had set up a cash bar and in our rush to depart ended up being an 'open bar' on me :-(
I wouldn't recommend this Buca unless you knew the server or management and were ensured a good time. As a former server I understand the stress of waiting on large parties, but still expect the style of service afforded to smaller tables. I really did appreciate the effort management made to appease our complaints but simply wish we could have skipped the entire drama. And as I mentioned, the food was delicious!
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