Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant

I really love this place and would recommend it to anyone who loves Italian food. Great restaurant and great staff. They get yor food to your table quickly. The food also is really wonderful, my personal favorite is the Chicken Marsala. Portions are big and designed for 2 – 4 people to share, so expect to compromise with someone. Overall great experience.

I have been to this Buca location several times.
The food and service are good! I would recommend
the Apple Walnut Gorgonzola Salad. It is excellent.
I also like the pasta dishes. The meatballs are large and good!
I do not like the house bread. No flavor at all!
Service is good!

I’ve dubbed this place the «Chucky Cheese» of Itallian restaurants … Big plates of «over priced» Garbage «frozen» tasting food, waitresses display a fake type of good service where you know they don’t wanna be there… Stay away from this place if you want to eat and not feel sick!

As a follow up… Someone named Sven reached out to me and said he would contact me via email. Never heard from him again. Guess this explains the customer service at the retail level. When leaders don’t lead… or lead down the easy path instead of the right one.

We visited Buca recently for my aunt’s birthday (a Tuesday evening around 8PM). It was the first time any of us had gone to a Buca, but we were all interested in looking at the weird-​ish wall art and recognizing the various old-​time celebs. We were a party of 5, and orderd a 2 person lasagna, and a 4 person veggie pizza. Each person got a good little slice of lasagna, and a few pizzas, and there were even leftovers (though none of us are huge eaters).
The lasagna was SERIOUSLY garlicky, but I kind of was digging it. It might have needed to be heated through a bit more, but I thought it was pretty good. Not INCREDIBLE, but good. The pizza had a great thing crust, and I loved the breaded/​fried eggplant on top. It had a good amount of flavor. Perhaps lacked a touchh of something (maybe cheese?), but it was also good overall, and I would try another of their pizzas for sure.
Service was, meh. Our waitress wasn’t particularly friendly, but she wasn’t particularly unfriendly either. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, as it was probably the end of a long day for her, and she seemed like she was sort of tired/​out of it, which is understandable. She was efficient enough, and I wouldn’t mark them down just because she didn’t have a pep in her step or superior customer service skills. We’re all human. Anywho, parking was a breeze in the lot, as well. I’d go back to try something else for sure. I particularly like the gaggle of coupons and such that they email you when you sign up on their website, as I’m pretty damn frugal, to put it mildly. :P

Great place for large groups. The portion size will not disappoint and the atmosphere is very joyful.

Love the food, that is why I give a 3 star rating. 2 stars deducted over the service we received the last two times we were there. They were almost empty the last time and still felt like our waitress was stretched thin with her servicing us and 1 other table. We have a family of 5 so a trip to Bucca is not cheap. We expect to be treated in a respectful manner. My kids love this place, but the service has decreased the frequency of our visits. Final thought out of our last three visits the expresso machine has been down for two of them, buy a new coffee machine or take the specialty coffees off your menu. If you cannot afford to upkeep a machine or replace it when it breaks then you shouldn’t offer those items on your menu. I also feel that it may never have been fixed between the two visits which is sad if that is true.

Food was filling and okay. The pizza was good. Pasta good, the calamari was terrible. Had a couple of Peronis and had the collusus brownie. Anyways, I would recommend this place for larger crowds. Family style servings. Our waitress Cheri was awesome!

I’ve had some pretty good meals there the food is above average nothing special but the overall atmosphere the place is pretty cool and pretty fun.
Would probably go there again.

So after 4 or 5 years since eating here my first time, my wife and I dropped in for dinner this evening. What was once quite impressive food several years ago was extremely disappointing tonight. The best thing I ate during the entire meal was the bread put out as an appetizer, dipped in the addictive olive oil mix they offered. I tore through an entire basket alone; my wife was on an important call and had to step away for a moment. She helped to eat the second basket soon placed before us on her return.
We settled on the small Lasagna, which feeds 2, along with the Italian Broccoli Romano as our side. The Lasagna was about the driest I’ve ever had, way in need of more sauce. We took turns scooping up what sauce remained on the serving platter, which still wasn’t enough to redeem the taste. The meat sauce (beef), was of very poor quality, and the broccoli was not very fresh.
Even the menu seemed much smaller then what I remembered on our previous visit. Our waitress kind of mumbled her name and we never bothered to ask her to repeat it. Nothing of interest to plan a return visit here.

Food was good but service was horrible. I have a feeling our waitress always has a bad day. I so wanted to like this place!

We went here on Christmas Eve and it was terrible. We had 2 kids with us and they sat us in the bar area (we had reservations), and our waitress, I swear, was high. I really wanted to give her a nice Christmas tip, but the service was just so bad. She couldn’t understand we were ordering 2 kids meals, even though I was holding up the kids menu and pointing. She just stared at me.
Also being in the bar area, we got to listen to the female bartender loudly cuss up a storm. Merry Christmas! oh and the food was awful, the pasta overlooked. I thought we’d be safe at a chain, not the case.

Wow, what a terrible dinner. I was looking forward to baked Ziti and look what I ended up with. No sauce whatsoever.
I tried to eat and it’s not inedible.

With themed booths and rooms such as the Pope room, this restaurant has to be five stars for any celebration! The Sophia Loren booth which we chose to celebrate my daughters «40» was so cozy and personal right outside the bar and near the Frank Sinatra Booth. Portions are so huge order family style and share!

Manny is one of the best managers we have ever dealt with at Buca and we have been coming here since it was first built.
He is caring and took care of 8 — 14 year olds for our sons birthday in the pope room.
I’ve never written a review about Buca Di Peppo, but because of our recent experience, I believe it is absolutely necessary
Manny was also instrumental in being able to get the slot of time and our appointment time for when we wanted it, right on my sons birthday.
Manny also had his staff watch over the kids and make sure they were not getting out of line.
Anyone that can handle that many 14 year olds deserves a metal!!!

Great atmosphere & good food!
Had a minor incident with a member of the wait staff not being up to par… But a member of management reached out to me & made everything right. We love the Buca atmosphere & are looking forward to many other dinners at Buca!

If you need to bring your screaming children somewhere to get some relatively low-​priced calories in them, I guess you could do worse.
And given the whole lower-​to-​mid price chain environment, the martini at the bar was drinkable.
But this place is pretty bad. From the strollers knocking your chair as they get carried by, to the bread to the salad to the pizza to the pasta. There is nothing great going on here.
Add to it the general parking maze and valley-​vibe and you’ve got a place to stay away from. Sorry… I don’t mean to stereotype the area (like the san fernando valley gets stereotyped by the west-​siders) but take a look around. And I don’t know if the obesity level is caused by that food or if people that are that overweight (and I’m not exactly thin) need to gather where low-​priced unhealthy food is served but again, take a look at the sheer volume of unhealthy and relatively untastey food being produced in that kitchen. You don’t want to be part of that. (Like I was last night.)
Don’t get me wrong… you can eat just as unhealthfully (and pay three times as much) at many restaurants from Santa Clarita to Marina Del Rey to Downtown to La Jolla, but at Buca Di Beppo you don’t have much choice. They have only ONE card to play to get customers in… give them a LOT and it doesn’t matter if it’s not that good.
Think Chuck E. Cheese, think Olive Garden and Applebee’s. And if that’s where you want to be eating… dig in, my friend.
The servers and bartenders, by the way, were a solid 3+ stars. They are, overall, probably less experienced and more overworked than the staff in many other places and all of them managed to keep a smile and a relatively good attitude.

Have feasted at this location a few times before, with last night being my most recent. I have never had a bad experience here, but cannot remember anything that stands out as extraordinary either… with one exception.
Beth (or Elizabeth, per my receipt) provided us with 5 star service last night. She is great at what she does, and went above and beyond to make sure we had everything we needed, when we needed it. She was professional, attentive, personable, and basically everything you could ask for in a server. She even apologized several times for things that were not even her fault. A definite team player with a great attitude.
Unfortunately, Beth’s service alone was not enough to bump them any higher than 3 stars. There were a couple other servers moping around who were obviously not happy to be there. I actually heard a couple of them complain about other coworkers to the manager, loudly and proudly with no tact. I came in to try to enjoy a nice meal, not to hear about all the Buca di Drama. And the manager seemingly did nothing to stop it. In fact, he seemed to be the cause of some of it…
As for their food, I can’t really complain. I like a lot of the items on their menu, and always leave with a full belly. For anyone who hasn’t been to a Buca, their servings are HUGE. We ordered 2 «small» pasta dishes last night, and had plenty of leftovers. I would say that 2 small orders would be enough to feed 6 adults of average appetite. They are very generous with their portions, and it is much appreciated.
Overall, I would say that 3 stars is a fair, accurate rating based on all of my previous visits. Beth’s exceptional service last night would normally have been enough to bump them up a star, but some sour grapes got in the way. I am 70% sure I will return at some point, and 100% sure I will ask for Beth when I do.

Overall Buca di Beppo is okay. Came here on a Thursday with my sister and niece. We ordered the small Shrimp Florentine to share. The service was good (we were basically the only ones in the restaurant at the time). No complaints really.
Ordered:
— Shrimp Florentine, small. $ 24.99
Linguine in garlic butter sauce with garlic shrimp, roma tomatoes, and spinach. It was pretty good. The shrimp was cooked nicely and complemented the pasta wonderfully.
This seems like a fun spot for a family or group to order family style. I think the larger dishes are a better value. But honestly the food is a bit overpriced.

Located across from the Edwards Theater. Park in the parking structure.
Danny– the maître d asked the party ahead of mine, «how many and then disappeared.» Someone else came by and asked if anyone needed to be seated. Danny reappears, and seats the party of 8. Waited 10 mins until my party of two were seated. I don’t understand why the other worker couldn’t have seated us. The place wasn’t busy. Buca needs to work on this. It definitely sets the tone for the diners to unnecessarily wait a long time just to be
Natalie– She made the experience a little bit better. Her service was prompt, and friendly.
Table plates — were so dirty. Some had blue frosting and some had caked on mashed potatoes.
Lasagna — I love their lasagna, by far, better than Olive Garden, Macaroni Grill, etc. I savored every single bit. You can tell that the sauce was simmer over several hours till the flavor was perfected.
Spicy chicken rigatoni — I like spicy, but they were a bit heavy handed on the red chili flakes.