Basta, Already
I can’t help but wonder whether the chain of Buca di Beppo restaurants, including the new one on the Country Club Plaza, would exist if it hadn’t been for Kansas City’s most brilliant failure: Walt Disney. The cartoonist and visionary went broke here in 1922 and finally packed his bags to find fame in fortune in sunny Los Angeles. It was he who imagined that clean, happy place we know as Disneyworld, with its “prototype” universe that includes safe, none-too-“foreign” pocket-sized versions of China, Italy, France and Morocco. What better way to see the world than in the heart of a theme park? No fussing with international exchange rates. No worries about language differences, thieves, dirty hotels or unhygienic public bathrooms. At Disney’s “World Showplace,” a visit to Pretend Marrakech or the “Eiffel Tower” is only minutes away from the comfort of a hotel suite or trailer park.
Similarly, the Minneapolis-based Buca di Beppo chain recreates the distinctive flavors and campy décor of a 1950s-style restaurant in the “Little Italy” neighborhood of some big city (think New York, Chicago or San Francisco). It’s the Disney version of a neighborhood Italian joint, which is why the spacious bathrooms are spotless and the knickknacks are livelier than the food. And it’s why most — but not all — Buca di Beppo restaurants are built in the suburbs rather than in urban neighborhoods.
The first Buca to open in Kansas City was off I-35 in Lenexa. “Little Italy” it ain’t. It isn’t even a neighborhood. It might have been interesting if the chain had thought to put one of its boisterous restaurants in the brick building that once housed the old Jennie’s, in the neighborhood that really was Kansas City’s “Little Italy”: the old North End. But the Plaza, which isn’t just a tourist mecca but the closest thing Kansas City has to a traditional “downtown” (stores, restaurants, hotels, banks, office towers), must have seemed a more lucrative spot for a restaurant that targets big groups of people. Buca di Beppo is less a restaurant than a mini convention center, with booths as large as double-wides and “small” plates of food designed to feed four.
Real versions of what Buca di Beppo tries to be still exist around town. Italian Gardens, Anthony’s, Villa Capri and Cascone’s have fewer hilariously kitschy props, flea-market treasures and Catholic icons on the walls (the latter is way overdone at Buca di Beppo, which non-Papists might find uproarious, but devout Catholics, tiresome), but their charm is genuine, not contrived. As for Buca di Beppo’s food, well, that’s another contrivance.
As the grandson of Italian immigrants, I find the Italian-American food served at Buca di Beppo to be hearty comfort food — but surprisingly boring. My dining companions nearly always disagreed with me, praising the restaurant’s creations like Eva Peron genuflecting before the Pope. But they always added a caveat, such as this one from my friend Shea: “It’s great! I liked everything I tasted! But I’ll never come back. I mean, this is where you come with a bunch of friends to hang out, not have a quiet dinner.”
My most abrasive friend, John, said the food was better than he’d anticipated. “When I walked in and saw the décor, I expected the worst. But it’s decent Italian-American food with no pretentions. It is what it is: the Italian version of the Cheesecake Factory.”
And Shea’s husband, Barry, wanted me to add that “the house Chianti is very weak, lifeless. No body.”
I felt the same way about many of the dishes I sampled, all of which arrived at the table as gargantuan, visually sumptuous creations. Yet even a dish as ubiquitous as a mixed-greens salad was so bland that we begged for extra oil and balsamic vinegar to try to animate it. The bruschetta appetizer was a pile of chopped tomatoes, olive oil and far too little basil spooned onto wedges of inch-thick dry bread. It looked good enough to frame, but in the taste department it was all show. For me, one bite was plenty and basta — enough!
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Maybe that’s because it took so long to get that single bite. When our party of four was seated, the server inexplicably brought out china plates and flatware — for three. After he delivered the bruschetta, I made two polite requests for an additional plate. But another ten minutes passed, and our dazed server scurried to get one only after I pulled a Sinatra and actually barked at him. His dimwitted style did not improve as the night progressed, although I blame the lackadaisical management, not him. I saw plenty of poorly trained servers in both dining rooms and at the hostess’ station. When it comes to providing professional service, this restaurant could take some lessons from Disneyworld’s employee handbook.
One waitress had so much false vivacity I half expected her to launch into “It’s a Small World.” And one waiter was the youthful version of Don Knotts. Not until my last visit did a server have any polish. He was the only waiter who actually brought out a basket of bread (two slices that looked good but had the tasteless consistency of sponge cake) to go with our salads. I’d heard from another customer that you had to beg for bread. But no — you beg for butter or olive oil. The bread comes out automatically if you don’t order garlic bread or bruschetta as an appetizer.
I liked the cheesy version of traditional garlic bread — but if you don’t appreciate thick cloves of garlic, you’ll have a vampire’s reaction to it. At the opposite extreme, while a heaping bowl (and I’m talking about the “small” size) of spaghetti and meatballs was another photo opportunity, the meatballs had as much spice as you’d expect from the meatloaf at a Branson Village Inn. They were, however, big enough to use for a game of bocci.
I was less bowled over by the spaghetti aglio olio (made with linguini here, by the way), dripping with a garlic, butter and olive-oil sauce and tossed with so few pieces of broccoli and chopped onion it seemed as if they were afterthoughts. Meatier offerings had more gusto. Veal Marsala was thickly glazed with a sweet wine reduction and loaded with golfball-sized mushrooms. Chicken Vesuvio was an MGM production number, its lightly sautéed, oregano-dusted chicken breasts floating on a sea of marinated white beans, bite-sized lengths of spicy sausages and cheese-dusted potato halves (which should have roasted a little longer).
Less visually spectacular but much tastier was a simple dish of delicately floured chicken breasts sautéed until the surface was barely golden and nearly crispy, then drenched in a lemony butter-caper sauce. The word “restaurant” derives from “restorative,” and this dish was the ultimate healing food on a cold, damp night.
But the feel-good theme was overdone once again when it came to dessert. A slab of spumoni, slathered in chocolate sauce, was only slightly smaller than the table. And the communal bowl of tiramisu was drunk with too much sweet rum (instead of the traditional, nicer Marsala), too little coffee and too little marscapone, all whipped up with too much heavy cream. Shea took one taste and sniffed, “It’s just too Cool Whip-py!”
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Like all the dishes at Buca di Beppo, it looked sensational. That’s the main problem with this restaurant: It pays so much attention to the visual presentation that the diner’s other senses eventually rebel. And after a while the place just seems too damn noisy. It’s one thing to pretend to be an old-fashioned neighborhood Italian joint. Pulling off the act is harder.
