cellio | Buca di Beppo

What a strange restaurant. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Last night, to celebrate lorimelton's birthday, a bunch of us went to a restaurant I had not previously heard of, Buca di Beppo. Now let's start with the name. For some reason, I had trouble maintaining this name in memory, because there were no hooks. Those weren't personal names or place names I'd ever heard before, and they weren't familiar-sounding words, and the pattern suggested that at least one of them should have been recognizable. I actually internalized it as "two two-syllable 'B' words connected by an article or preposition", and figured there wouldn't be two places in the same block that matched that description. So, off we went.

The neon sign out front said "elegant dining". We met ralphmelton at the door and said that we hoped we were dressed well enough (we were wearing jeans); he said not to worry. Lori then led us inside, where we got our first glimpse of the decor. She particularly wanted to show us their statue of David, to demonstrate once and for all that "elegant" had a different meaning here. Most replicas of classical statues that I've seen have not been painted bright purple. This particularly statue was not especially unusual for the place; I saw several others, all brightly-painted, some augmented with other decorations. (I believe it was Venus who had the flower garland draped around her neck.)

The walls were completely covered with photos, paintings, tchachkes, strange newspaper/magazine clippings, and assorted goofy stuff. I saw a sign addressed to the staff that said "food is not a weapon", and another that said "state law forbids threatening customers and their children". This does not begin to describe the decor, really.

The restaurant is on three floors and is divided into a bunch of small rooms. Lori said she hoped we didn't get the "pope room". Pope room? Yes, so-named because of the large statue of the pope in the center. We never saw it; I assume it wasn't treated any more seriously than the parts of the place we did see. We ended up in the "cardinal room". This did not involve birds. (There was no statue; the name derived from the hat hanging on the center wall.)

Really, though, "X room" (for any value of X) would imply far more of a unifying theme to the room's contents than is accurate. Maybe each room is simply named for its most prominent piece.

On our way to our table we walked past the kitchen, and the hostess made a point of saying that it's an open kitchen and we were free to walk in and look around. (I assume they had some areas blocked off from customers, for health-code reasons if nothing else.) I should have gone to take a look, to satisfy my curiosity about the logistics, but I didn't.

The food (Italian) was very good. Note, though, that this is not a place to take a date, unless you're double- or triple-dating. The food is served family-style, and each dish you order feeds 4-6. Our group of 11 ordered three entrees, two salads, and a couple appetizers, and there was some food left over.

The cheese-stuffed manicotti was very good, as were both salads (one mixed greens, one ceaser). The other two entrees had meat in them, so I didn't eat them, but those who did had good things to say about both. The garlic bread was tasty and actually had perceptible real garlic, not just garlic powder mixed in with the butter.

We brought our own birthday cake and the staff loaded it up with candles. They also brought a large candle in a two-foot-high holder and put that right in front of Lori. She had to stand up to blow it out. I wondered what the staff was going to sing, in these days of copyright/royalty demands on the traditional melody, but we started singing before they could take control. We sang and they shouted Lori's name at the appropriate time.

It was a fun evening. I would go there again, if we had a large-enough group. You could do it with six, if everyone can agree on one entree, but eight is probably better.

Monica

Buca di Beppo

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