Buca di Beppo Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Thousand Oaks

So I was chatting with a pal who's a Record producer and song writer from the Entertainment Industry.. He wanted to discuss a few topics over dinner and he could not think of a place to eat at. I recommended this eatery.. because I dined at a location up in San Jose, California many years ago. This location is in the Janns MALL in Thousand Oaks CA. Parking was easy.. despite the fact that this mall is a popular location for restaurants, shopping and a Gold's gym. We were seated rather quickly and our table was near the kitchen area. This chain is very popular due to the location and Italian food is still a favorite of mine. The manager and the server were very friendly to us. We started out with a Vodka and I ordered Chianti. Then we ordered a salad, that had a mixture of salami, yellow peppers , purple onions, lettuce, tomatoes. The dressing is to die for ..not to bitter,or watery. My friend did not want dressing in our salad. Our meals consisted of me ordering Ravioli, My friend ordered pasta , mozzarella chicken Alfredo..I also ordered fried calamari. The meal was so delicious "!!! Yes... I will most certainly come back to THIS location. The location in San Jose California..the food wasn't that great.. This location serves large portions and you are well fed. The Cook's we're on their A-Game. .. Let me describe the location...when you step in you feel like you are at a Italian museum...the pictures.. artifacts give you that feel ..as if you stepped back to the 1950's-1980's . Lastly before we left..I needed to go to the ladies powder room. Well check this out.. the bathroom..reminded me of an Italian Grandma's bedroom. Again I don't recall the location in San Jose, California. Looking anything like this.. but I departed truly happy and with a satisfied tummy. I enclosed some pictures and my apologies for not sharing additional images. My pal..is an Old school Recording Industry individual and he doesn't understand the fuss about a review"?. Unless it aquates to his work and an artist he's worked with"?? . My point..we were talking so much and I didn't want to offend him. By taking too many photos,,while he discussed the legal issues with recording contracts, touring,etc Finally this is a perfect location for families,first dates, engagements and birthday parties. Nothing was out of order and the service was up to my friends standards. Normally he eats in pricey eateries in Malibu and Beverly hills CA. Enjoy 🍝🍷 Happy...

This restaurant used to be good, so if you think you are going to the same good old restaurant you're not !!! Maybe it's a new management or a diffwrent cook. We ordered the chicken rigatoni, our favorite dish. ‏This time the dish was mostly pasta and hardly any chicken on it. ‏When the waiter first brought it to the table ‏I noticed ‏that I don't see any chicken, I mentioned it to him and he said there is chicken inside. We dug and dug inside the pasta and we could hardly see any chicken. Maybe very small little pieces (almost like the small pieces of meat you see in spaghetti meat sauce) ‏ For $40 a dish you expect a little more than just plain pasta. I called the waiter and mentioned it to him but he was argumentative and daid that he saw some chicken on the top. maybe he saw something that we couldn't see. Next time I would definitely bring my magnifying glasses. At some point he offered us to get another dish so we ordered the chicken marsala, maybe finally we'll get some chicken. This time we got the chicken marsala dish that came only with chicken. no pasta at all. Just a lonely chicken for $40 dish. The chicken was extremely sweet. Almost not edible. Tested like burned sugar, and a lot of it. It it was impossible to eat. Impossible.

So the way I saw it, the options was pasta no chicken or chicken no pasta And a lot of sugar. The prices are pretty high. It used to be high and great. Now only high.

Just for comparison. you can go to Maggiano's in Woodland Hills or Cheesecake Factory in Thousand Oaks the dishes are as big but a lot tastier and cheaper too. Never again I feel bad to write such a review, but it was worse than the way I described it and I'm actually being nice but I feel cheated. No...

I went in with a friend, we were so excited about the place, we were looking forward to having some Italian food for a long time, and this place looked fabulous at the beginning, but oh my, for the service, worst experience I could have. There were only like to tables at the time, and the server took more than 10 minutes to get asked about the drinks. It was a woman; I understand she could have been busy, but the way she answered to anything made it worse. I was looking at the alcoholic drinks and asked nicely which one she would recommend. She quickly said, "How would I know? I only work here, I haven't tried anything." OHHH, sorry to ask about it, I'm not expecting her to taste everything, but the way she said it was not at all polite. She could at least mention she has not tried it, but the most popular ones, is it so hard to be polite and not have an attitude? The menu on its own looks good, a bit expensive if it's only 2 persons, like the commercial says, it's more for groups, well, we didn't care, we were paying for it at the end. When we ordered our food, she was explaining that it was a lot a food we ordered and with one meal would be enough, we told her we understood but we wanted to try it, (we were only ordering 3 meals, if we don't finish it we can take it home, no big deal) then again she insisted it was a lot and we should only get one because it was very expensive, as if we looked like we could not afford it. She brought the meal, never came back, and at the end, now she wanted to offer one of the drinks, which I had already passed and was in disliked. A good restaurant only for the looks, but with horrible service and a bad attitude from the server. Very...