Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Albuquerque

I have really mixed feelings about our recent dining experience at Buca di Beppo in Albuquerque, NM.

I called a week in advance to reserve a table for 8 for my daughter’s 10th birthday. We were all super excited to eat there, as it would be my second time visiting. The food wasn’t exactly what drove me to choose the restaurant, but the atmosphere.

I had loved the “authentic” Italian decor, black and white photographs, and memorabilia. It felt like a neat place to do a scavenger hunt, or I Spy. Fun for the kids. Although the grand majority of the imagery should probably be censored for kids…it has lots of mature content, it still felt like a neat and authentic dining experience with decent Italian flavors.

Our first visit felt too pricey and hyped up for what it was. Lots of tomatoes, very large quantities, and a very expensive bill at the end. In short, that’s how it felt, but I really wanted my mother and rest of the family to experience the family atmosphere.

Sadly, the celebration fell short when I had originally planned to spend no more than $100, as the chain currently has a special of 4 for $40, or four can eat with only $40. It offers salad, bread sticks, and an entree for four. I thought of getting two of those deals as it was 8 of us, and 3 of those were kids (not exactly big eaters). I was not informed over the phone when I made the reservation that the deal limits you on the entrees you can choose.

So, when we were ready to order, I was informed that if I still wanted the special offer, I would HAVE to choose one of the following entrees: spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccini Alfredo, penne pasta, and/or baked Ziti. Nobody wanted those entrees so already I could sense some disillusionment.

We had planned to get a pizza and stuffed shells with spinach, and an individual portion of Chicken Marsala. Turns out none of the entrees were covered in the special offer, so in order to still order what we wanted, I had to bite my tongue and order to make everyone happy. I ordered just that, except the shells were not available with spinach and ricotta, only with sausage. So I changed my mind and said no to the shells but raviolis with meat sauce instead.

I had to order separate salads for everyone, and when they arrived we noticed the Cesar salad had absolutely zero dressing. The kids didn’t appreciate the balsamic vinegar flavor in their bread and they were starving. The house salad was decent but portion wise, they were not very filling. Those salads were $22 each! Pretty steep for what it was.

Then the Chicken Marsala had a very strong poultry odor, got worried the chicken breasts were old. Marsala sauce was not very good, it lacked the Marsala wine flavor we craved. Also, they didn’t have it in individual portion, so I ended up paying $38 for that plate alone. The server mistakenly brought shells stuffed with sausage and I didn’t have the guts to return it as we were all pretty hungry, and didn’t want to ruin the celebration.

The best tasting dish turned to be the raviolis. The pizza lacked flavor and freshness. The shells were kinda dry as they put sauce only at the bottom of the plate. We all ate but felt somewhat unsatisfied. Flavor was lacking for the most part. So, long story short, instead of spending $100, I ended up spending $230 including tips.

Service was decent, as was the house bread, and what we really appreciated was the “free” bday Sunday with brownie. Large enough for everyone. My daughter loved that part, as well as the bday singing from the wait staff. All in all an interesting visit, just wanted to be somehow surprised or more satisfied than the first visit. It seems to me the business is struggling to stay afloat. It only had a few tables filled, everything else was empty of life. If they want to survive, they need to revamp their menu, and offer more options/specials. This will probably be my last...

Lets start off by saying that the restaurant could use some tlc. It's looking bit shabby. It could have done with some renovations during Covid. The booth seats have large patches where the vinyl is coming off and the plastic table cloths have large cuts and tears in them as well as being faded.

The manager, Zoe, was very accommodating and apologetic because they were out of a few items. They were out of all bread! What's an Italian restaurant without bread? So I suggested they make some garlic cheese bread using pizza dough & she did. It was delicious.

As we sat at our 3rd table of the evening we ordered a vast array of food. Why our 3rd table? The first was a booth and it just wasn't going to be comfortable for our party of 6 and the seat covering was just beat up. We were next directed to the "Pope" room. While we waited for the table to be cleaned another party came in to be seated at the same table & stated that they had reserved the room a week earlier, so we conceded and moved to our 3rd & final table.

Our server had a bit of an attitude and didn't really seem like she wanted to be there. She even walked away from me when I was still talking to her. We were told that we had to scan the QR code to see the menu or we could have a paper menu. I opted for the paper menu which had really small print and the appetizers list was half cut off from the page.

Now for the food. We ordered the trio platter appetizers and proved to be better than most anything that we ate off of the menu. The chicken parmesan was a bit dry. It could have used a bit more sauce and cheese. They were out of spaghetti noodles so we ended up with fettuccine noodles, that was the choice we were given just before the food came out or cancel the item. It could have used more sauce. Quatro al Forno, tasty but a bit toasted. The pepperoni pizza was eaten by the kids and they enjoyed it.

It had been a few years since I'd been here and it was with good reason. The last tine we were here the food was terrible and the noodles were undercooked. I thought that given the time lapse that things would have gotten better. Even though the manager tried her best to take care of us, I doubt that we'll be returning to this location...

TLDR: Good food, but delays on pickup + missing item makes for an unhappy customer.

Full story: called in my order (feast for 49.99 of spaghetti w meat sauce, eggplant parm, salad, garlic bread plus an extra chicken rigatoni) at 1:30pm asking for pickup at 5:10-5:15. The person taking my order said “how’s 5:20?” To which I responded “let’s do 5” thinking I’d get there at 5:10 and my food would be a little cold but at least ready. Get there at 5:10 or so and everything is ready except the garlic bread. Waited about 10 min to get garlic bread (really??) got my food and left. I get home and the spaghetti is missing. Call in and get directed to the manager who while polite offered a 30$ gift card that I can pick up (I had paid w gift card so refunding my card wasn’t an option). I say something like “isn’t the spaghetti more like 35?”, and he panders with “Oh I’m not at a register, so sure 35$?” Which I accept. I check the menu later and the spaghetti w meat sauce is 32.99, with tax that comes to 38.66, so the comp doesn’t even cover the food that was missing, let alone make up for the inconvenience of messing up the order… manager should know the menu well enough to offer a comp at least covering the cost of the food, and really should have gone above and beyond like offering to comp a full feast for 49.99 to make it right.

Now he didn’t know, but the spaghetti w meat sauce was the only thing of the order that my wife and toddler was going to be able to eat due to allergies (which is why I called in to begin with instead of doing an online order, the website says to call in orders for those with allergies), so we had to scramble and make something new for them. I mention this to highlight the inconvenience that the missing food caused. Why was calling in important? Well, for whatever reason, the spaghetti w meat sauce didn’t make it onto the ticket somehow, despite it being part of the feast for 49.99. And according to the manager, for some reason the kitchen made it but they had no idea what...