A Fine Way to Eat Yourself Stupid

[wolf]

There's a chain of restaurants that are springing up like gangsters, uh, I mean gangbusters.

Buca di Beppo.

The website does not do the place justice.

They advertise themselves as providing "Immigrant Southern Italian Cuisine."

That translates to big food, with plenty of garlic and olive oil.

Everything is served family style. They bring out heaping platters of whatever you asked for, and, like a happy Southern Italian Immigrant family, you fight over who gets more or less of something.

Massive, massive amounts of food get brought to your table. When you think you are done, it's time to move onto the entree, and then to dessert.

Traditional Italian Music plays in the background (Sinatra, mostly, but on occasion you will hear Volare and That's Amore.)

Each of the dining areas is themed ... it's pictures of these which the site lacks. You can choose to eat at The Kitchen Table, which is highly sought after ... the table is actually IN the kitchen of the restaurant ... you get to watch the hijinks of the chefs, food prep and wait staff as you dine. The only table which is more popular is in the "Pope Room". Seats 12 comfortably, or 18 very skinny, very close friends. We had a few more people than that this evening, and were seated in the Cardinale room ... photos of many members of the Vatican College of Cardinals adorned the walls of our dining area. Photos in the bar consist of two subjects ... sports, mainly soccer, and breasts. There's breasts a-poppin' galore in there, including Jayne Mansfield (I think) and a view of the Mona Lisa that I can't say I'd ever seen before.

The food was phenomenal ... I was with an extremely large group. I think that we ordered a total of nine entrees ... I know that I had some Lasagna (a special, not a regular menu item), Baked Ravioli with Meat Sauce, Lemon Chicken, Buccatini (proprietary pasta ... looks like spaghetti only it's hollow) con Pollo, Eggplant Parmesan, and also managed to scam a shrimp from one of our other table's Shrimp Scampi. (I was actually seated at a table that declared itself fish-free, but I wasn't the first violator of the rule ... one of the other women took the anchovies that the group who ordered the cesar salad thought were icky).

Just as I was about to settle into my pasta-induced stupor, Justin, our fine waiter, showed up with coffee and dessert menus.

Our table went for the Cannolli in a lake of chocolate sambuca sauce, a double chocolate cake, and what is possibly the best Tiramisu I've ever had. Each of these were more than sharable six ways, and one lucky person even ended up with leftovers of all three. I'm used to tiramisu being a little square of cake and cream, mildly dusted with cocoa ... not here. It filled a large pasta bowl ... the cocoa was perfectly applied to the top of the cream, not enough to make your mouth dry, but certainly enough to make it happy, and the ladyfingers were SOOOO drenched in liquor that they were delightfully soft and yummy.

That plus three large glasses of the House Chianti (no fava beans) put a very happy glow on my evening.