Buca's Tuscan Roadhouse — Restaurant in Harwich

Having lived in Dennis and never trying Bucca's, my parents decided to take my wife and I here for my birthday. We arrived at 530 and were seated in a booth in the bar area, which very much reminded me of a Boston North End eatery.

The waitress was pleasant, Eastern European with an accent but didn't know the difference between scotch and bourbon. Anyway, we ordered Calamari Fritta and Polenta E Formaggio for appetizers and they were both very good. After looking at the menu online to get an idea I was surprised to find the actual menu showed more items.

My father ordered the Bistecca Di Bucca (steak), my mother ordered the Gamberetti, my wife ordered Buca Bolognese and I ordered a Pork chop special. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed their meals. The food came out fairly quickly and after dinner I understood all of the comments praising the food because it was spectacular.

Now, the original waitress disappeared towards the end of dinner. I think we saw 5 different people involved in clearing dishes and bagging of leftovers. The manner in which the staff cleared dishes and asked us if we were done when we clearly weren't, made us feel very rushed. Another woman with an Eastern European accent came over and asked if we wanted dessert. We looked at the menu but were annoyed so we decided to leave. A new person brought the check and then the owner speaking on his bluetooth took the check.

Now i've read several comments mentioning discounts for locals but there was nothing in the restaurant advertising that. I'm confident in saying Bucca's is not a place locals would go. Locals go to Scargo, Villa Roma and Clancys. There also wasn't one MA tag in the lot when we left. Their clientele are tourists, I mean its April and they're here already. I also don't understand the owner walking around and speaking into his bluetooth. Very odd behavior to me for a host. A little condescending to be honest.

Probably wont be back. If you make me feel like you need my seat for someone else you'll never see me again. Waitresses should know all menus,...

I love bucas. I've come here for many years for special occasions. It's my father's favorite restaurant on the cape. So when the meal we got to celebrate last night was mediocre at best it was very disappointing. The bruschetta was good as ever, no surprise there. The meatball app we ordered was okay, not my favorite but nothing bad, and it was vegan and bucas is not a vegan restaurant so I can't hold that against them. The pasta though. It was terrible. Overcooked and mushy, the pesto was watery to the point of seeming more like a soup than a sauce. It didn't taste as if they'd salted the final dish, and the salt on the table was empty. If I were at Olive garden I wouldn't care about these things, but Bucas is not an olive garden. My steak was decent, but nothing amazing. Fried leeks that would have better served as a garnish than a side tasted like onion rings which is a shame when leeks can be so good. Overall it was an okay meal, but nowhere near good enough to justify the prices. To be fair it was a Monday. They were dead. Maybe they were trying to rotate out old product from the weekend? I don't know. I don't like when I feel I'm making excuses for such an acclaimed spot. It shouldn't matter if it's a Monday when you command these kinds of prices and have so much good publicity. The service was poor. Not terrible, plenty attentive, but the waiter clearly had his routine and script down and said everything as quick as possible and then was off in a flash. Again not a huge problem, but if I'm paying bucas prices I care about the little stuff. I probably won't be back for a meal and if I do I'll make a point to not come on a Monday night in the off-season because hopefully it's better when the back of house isn't suffering through such a slow night. I'd still get a glass of wine and an app at the bar, but for a celebratory dinner I'll be...

I’ve heard great things and was looking forward to this meal, but my partner and I were overall pretty let down with our experience. The ambiance is pleasant and the wines were great, but the food left a lot to be desired. My pasta dish was drastically overcooked and underseasoned (salt and pepper shakers empty on the table as well) and my partners medium-rare steak was tough and served very rare, and it’s side dishes though fine were nothing to write home about. The vegan meatball app we ordered was also bland and underwhelming, however I must give credit where credit is due and say that the bruschetta we also ordered with it was absolutely delicious and the star of the entire meal. We took our dessert, tiramisu, to-go and that too was underwhelming and lacking in flavor. Also, while not that important because service was smooth and well-paced, I must say that we also found our server a bit difficult to interact with at times as he spoke very fast and very quietly making it difficult to hear him.

In the interest of transparency I will say that we did not inquire to management about the quality of our meal. We purchased this meal with a gift card we received, and felt it not necessarily appropriate to make a slew complaints when it was a meal we were gifted, as we didn’t want it to seem like we were trying to be scammy and milk the gift card for more than it’s value, if that makes sense.

Overall I would say that Buca’s isn’t worth the hype or the price. I hate to put down a year-round business here but for a $200 pricetag the quality was just simply not there, so we were just glad that this meal was not on...