Buono Osteria — Restaurant in Gibsons

If someone was to look at my previous reviews you’d see a pattern of great reviews. I love to talk highly of businesses that have done a great job. That is particularly true of businesses local to me. Share the story, increase their business is my motto. Terrible service is my exception to the above...(don't get ahead of me, you don't know where this is going yet ;)

Here we have a local restaurant for which I have been given a gift card, a couple of years ago now. This is a great thing for restaurants. They basically get paid for a meal in advance, guaranteeing them future business. Sometimes people lose these cards and that turns out to be a bonus for the restaurant. But mostly, people just want to use them, to capitalize on the investment that has been made.

I have now attempted to go into Buono on 5 different occasions. We live in Sechelt, a 25 minute drive to Buono, so not the most convenient visit, but we’ve eaten there before and it was worth it.

We have called in order to book a dinner for a group and left a message since no one answered. As the day approached we called back to confirm as we hadn’t heard from them to be met (no exaggeration) with a response “Did we call you back to confirm? Then it wasn’t confirmed.” It left us a little taken aback, but hey, maybe it was on us to call back to confirm the receipt of a phone call reservation, rather than expect a response.

We have called in advance to ask how busy a night it will be, because we couldn’t guarantee what time we’d be there in order to make a reservation. After the phone rang to voicemail several times without an answer we have showed up and been told they were too busy to seat us. No worries, there are other restaurants.

We’ve called and had no answer, and have showed up on a night where there happened to be a private party, restaurant effectively closed.

We called today to ensure they were open as in this instance we were actually coming down explicitly to eat there. We laughed and said “Better call and check, we haven’t had the best of luck so far.” No answer, but the voicemail we reached informed us they are open winter hours, Thursday through Monday, at 5pm.

Fantastic we thought. This is our night.

Until we arrived there and discovered one other potential patron, waiting for three guests, who had also called and received the same message. We all stared in disbelief at a sign that said “Closed for Winter Break”. I mean, it must be the most complicated voicemail system in the world for them not to be able to update it with that important piece of information.

There wasn’t a moment where we considered this was a joke, just another in a long line of disappointments in trying to get to this restaurant.

Now, we’ve tried 5 times over the last couple of years, which isn’t a huge amount and it’s to be expected that we might get unlucky once or twice.

But in order to try to reduce those chances we have called and left messages, and once or twice spoken to the most rude people we’ve encountered in a restaurant. And STILL we have attempted to give them our business.

Let me be clear… Buono serves excellent food. We have been there for a Whiskey tasting evening and had a stellar time. We are overall fans of the restaurant.

But we’ve absolutely had enough. Take your chances and go there. You won’t likely be disappointed with the food. And you might just have excellent service as we have had in the past, prior to pandemic times. But if you go, and you find attitudes, or service, or even availability to be a patron, lacking in quality, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

I have no idea who their clientele actually is. But I guarantee you, from here on I will not be counting myself as one of them.

And it’s only cost me a $100 gift card for this lesson.

Update to review: Buono has responded to my review and missed the point of it... We AND others, based on the poor reviews on multiple sites, have attempted to make reservations on a number of occasions. We have called and received no reply. We have called and left a message and.......

July 2025: Updated review. A friend brought me here at my request for my birthday. We had a 5:30pm reservation, arrived at 5pm, were seated away from window and next to the only other patrons in the restaurant, who had a toddler. When we asked if we could sit near the window were told no, all booked. When we left just after 7pm, two of those tables were still empty. Food was mostly good, especially the Caesar salad. Pera pizza salty and not up to its usual standard and creme brûlée disappointing. Service rude and impatient for no reason, starting with grumpy (as at every of several visits to this restaurant) chef in full view on arrival and departure. When asked about meal experience by front of house person we mentioned our service disappointment and her response was sarcastic and defensive…with a smile obviously not matching her response. This is my favourite restaurant on the lower Sunshine Coast but it may be my last visit until I hear reports of improved service, which were not evident when I went in to leave this review. Bad service complaints by many people. For a fine dining cost, the experience was far from it. I felt embarrassed that I had suggested this restaurant to my friend at the cost she had to pay for the meal, with tip expectations starting at 18%.

Review from about 5 years ago: I originally gave a one star review as follows: We were looking forward to trying and supporting this new restaurant. Didn’t get to try the food because we were advised we could not order a Caesar drink so chose to leave. As a non-drinker I did not want the equivalent of a Shirley Temple or water and was looking forward to a virgin Caesar at the end of a hot day pulling weeds. Disappointed at this apparent specific decision to exclude this particular favourite drink of Canadians.

Update: I went to dinner here with a neighbour a few weeks ago. They still don’t serve Caesars but I have to say their Pera pizza (I added the prosciutto) was absolutely delicious. I took half home and ate it heated up the next day and it maybe been even better! Service was friendly, professional and efficient. The view is beautiful over the water. I’m still going to take a star off for the lack of Caesar drink...I truly think this could be changed to accommodate patrons...

My boyfriend and I were visiting from Vancouver for the long weekend and decided we wanted to have a nice dinner one of the nights. We had made a reservation for dinner and arrived just in time for our reservation.. only to be third in line to be seated and no host in sight at the front. We waited for 10 mins in the line and there was no host checking in with us if we had a reservation or not. The people in front of us did not have a reservation and were talking to the host - who finally came our way - and mentioned they’d like a table. Without checking with us if we had a reservation, the host almost gave our table away to the group in front. The manager even asked him if we were the group the table was reserved for to which the host replied .. no it’s not them. It was us .. my boyfriend had to point out that we did in fact have a reservation.. and we had been waiting 15 mins. The host seemed slightly annoyed at that and after asking the group in front of of us to come back in 20 mins, he then said to us "damn, you got lucky ". There was no luck involved whatsoever. We were on time. My boyfriend then mentioned that he had asked for a nice table by the window for us at the time of making the reservation to which the host replied saying we were late and that they had to give our table to someone else. As stated earlier.. we were on time and had in fact been waiting to be seated at the time of this comment. This really upset us as we were certainly not in the wrong. The attitude and tone in which we were greeted at this restaurant was uncalled for and extremely rude. For an establishment that is giving customers a fine dining experience.. this was a total shock. Giving 2 stars for this reason but we did want to give props to our waitress who really took care of us and made our experience better...