Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Kansas City

From the moment you enter Buca di Beppo, it’s like walking into your Italian grandma’s basement if your grandma was a hoarder, had questionable taste in Catholic memorabilia, and believed every family photo ever taken should be framed and nailed to a red checkered wall like an exorcism in progress. I mean it. This place has more pictures than your aunt’s Facebook timeline and smells like garlic made sweet love to a meatball in a wine cellar. It’s beautiful. It’s chaos. It’s carbs. It’s home. The vibe is “mobster’s retirement party meets Olive Garden on acid.” It’s loud in there. Not like "rowdy crowd" loud. No. This is “we’re hosting a wedding, baptism, divorce hearing, and a mafia confession all at once” loud. Every table sounds like it’s being mic’d for a documentary on family trauma. It’s like eating inside a Sopranos blooper reel and I loved every second of it.  The Food Let’s talk about the real reason we’re here: the food. Mama mia. These portions aren’t “family style” they’re “extended bloodline style.” One bowl of spaghetti could feed a Little League team and have enough left over to carb load the coach. They bring you dishes the size of satellite dishes. I ordered the Spaghetti and nearly had to sign a waiver. The thing came out looking like it had its own zip code.  And the garlic bread? Oh sweet carbohydrates of Nazareth, the garlic bread is baptized in butter like it just gave its life to the flavor gospel. One bite and I started speaking fluent Sicilian or at least loudly mispronouncing it like I was auditioning for Goodfellas: The Musical.  Meatballs: I asked how many meatballs came with the spaghetti. The waiter said, “Just one.” I laughed. He didn't. It arrived. ONE MEATBALL. The size of a softball. This wasn’t a meatball—it was a meat planet. I named it Tony. Tony the meatball. He had density. Personality. He paid taxes. Shout out to our server, who handled our table like a culinary therapist with a tray. She knew the menu, cracked jokes, and never once judged us for ordering a dessert “for the table” that mysteriously never left my end of the table. It seems weird I talk about restrooms but it's important as well. I went to the bathroom and somehow had to walk through what looked like the kitchen, a photo gallery of 1950s Italians, and a possible Vatican satellite office. At one point I think I entered a portal. When I came back, I felt emotionally closer to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra  Final Thoughts: Buca di Beppo is not just a restaurant. It’s an experience. It’s a sensory avalanche, a carbohydrate crusade, a place where diet plans go to die and your pants beg for mercy. It’s loud. It’s nostalgic. It’s like going to your cousin Vinny’s wedding even though no one’s getting married and you’re just here for the baked ziti.  Would I return? Absolutely. Like a boomerang made of mozzarella. This is where flavor and dysfunction hold hands, sing “That’s Amore,” and throw marinara...

Buca di Beppo is certainly a dining experience; unfortunately for our group it was also an overrated one.

The atmosphere is top notch. The food is not so much, and the prices are appallingly expensive for the quality of the food.

Fun first - the building is setup almost like a maze. The entrance from the parking garage was especially interesting since it leads directly into the kitchen, which made us all question whether or not we were allowed to walk through there. This is where the staff shines because they just smiled and beckoned us to move forward; albeit without letting us know which way to go to get to the front to meet up with the rest of our party. We roamed the hallways, appreciated a room set aside for the Pope and his entourage, and eventually found the rest of our group.

We reserved a table for 5 in late March on a Friday evening, but that was hardly necessary. Ample seating was available as far as I could tell. As the host navigated us through the labyrinth to our seats, it was clearly evident this was a not a busy night based on the many empty tables.

The server was very polite and accommodating. A member of our group has a tree nut allergy and she elected to share with us a cheat sheet (which appeared to come from their training manual) that listed out all of their menu’s offerings and any associated allergen.

The prices on the menu reflect “family” portions. A small Chicken Parmesan cost around $32. But this price is supposed to be shared with someone else. Note that this entrée does not include pasta. Pasta with marinara or meat sauce can be similarly ordered for an additional cost of $30 (approximated). Now we are up to over $60 for two diners who want pasta with their entrée.

We ordered the appetizer platter of 3 that includes calamari, spicy shrimp, and fried mozzarella triangles. This was awesome. It would have been nice to have marinara dipping sauces served with them. We didn’t ask, but I’m confident that the accommodating staff would have brought some out; just not sure if that would have been an additional cost.

Our group ordered Lasagna, stuffed shells, chicken parmesan, pasta with meat sauce, cheese bread, and an appetizer. The total bill was $240 after a few soft drinks and one adult beverage were added in.

The prices on the menu led us to believe that the quality of the food would be something beyond common fare Italian food; but I’m very sorry to report his was not the case. Many of us felt that our own homemade Italian entrees tasted better than the food brought to our tables. And the bread sticks tasted like any other pizza delivery place.

In conclusion – I guess since it resides on the Plaza, you are “expected” to just absorb the price of a dining experience, but from now on, I’m going to scrutinize any online menu without prices and wonder if perhaps my own cooking is the...

We went here to celebrate my daughter’s 18th birthday. We were so excited as we had heard so many amazing things about this restaurant. As a single mom, we don’t go out for expensive dinners unless it’s a very special occasion. Here’s what we encountered

When we arrived and we’re finally able to locate the hostess, we were seated and someone got our drink orders and said our waiter would be right with us. He wasn’t. We waited a long time and he was pleasant enough, however didn’t seem to know much about the food. Or maybe he just wasn’t very enthusiastic about it, which I now understand why. We all order and he assures us it’ll be fast as it’s all already prepared (not really what I wanted to hear about my really expensive dinner). He was not wrong about it already being prepared, but he was incorrect about the amount of time it would take for our over cooked food to get to us. The spaghetti had no sausage on it, it was just noodles with what looked like a can of diced tomatoes dumped on top. The chicken in the other 2 dishes was hard and dry, it tastes like it had been over cooked and left on the warmer to finish the dehydration process. The broccoli was frozen broccoli that they cooked, nothing about this meal was fresh.

Our waiter was ghost once that food hit the table. Luckily we were able to flag other servers down for basics like….a plate to eat off of. When he did come back it was to see if we were finished yet. Even though with 6 people at our table and the food having hardly been touched, he didn’t seem to care no one ate as he didn’t inquire about our meal. Instead he brought over 2 small to go containers, for 3 meals (if you’ve ever eaten here you’ve seen the portion sizes, not fit for a small container). When asked for additional boxes he disappeared again. The manager finally brought us some.

The most disappointing part of this $150 fiasco wasn’t even the parts I’ve already described. It was that, even after telling them it was my daughter’s birthday, and putting it in the special notes of the reservation, and having brought gifts for her, no one acknowledged it. There was no singing from the staff…we were able to get the lyrics to their birthday song off of the placements on the table, and we heard it when they sang it to another table, but as for ours, it did not happen.

The whole experience was super disappointing. It was a complete waste of money and I wish we had picked anywhere else. Fazoli’s has better food than we got and McDonald’s seemed super friendly compared to the staff at Buca’s. I hope this review saves someone else heartache and a...