Food

Buca di Beppo
Fine Italian Dining and Sanitary Bathrooms

Every once in awhile, one is innocently wandering through life and gets broadsided by something so bizarre that one's existence is shaken to its very foundations. In my case, this was accomplished by a visit to Buca DI Beppo, one of a national chain of Italian family-style restaurants.

Invited there for a birthday party, I was told that they had great chow, huge portions served "family style". The "family style" part of the description turned out to be true; Beppo's excelled at serving portions that should have come with their own troughs. My Caesar salad was piled six inches high and contained enough greenery to keep four people chewing their cud for a couple of hours.

But great? It was okay, definitely edible, but I wouldn't call it great. Serviceable, maybe; that same salad was liberally coated with an oily, uninspired white coating that didn't contribute much to the flavor, but didn't cause me to break out in a rash, either.

The huge portion sizes can either be a blessing or a curse. If your tastes aren't compatible with your companions' and you each order your own entree, you're going to have a bunch of something to take home. If that something happens to be a salad, it's going to be a watery pile of green mush by the next day. If everybody orders different things, you're also going to have a huge bill by the end of the meal. The entrees may be huge, but they're not cheap.

However, as I found out, the real reason one goes to Beppo's is to be inspired and refreshed by its elegant decor.

It was clear even from the outside of the restaurant that all was not business as usual: classical Romanesque statues gleefully sported clashing Christmas lights. Inside, the place branched into myriad grottos formed by a particularly demented troglodyte. Every visible surface - even the ceilings! - was covered with unabashedly tacky, kitschy objects, leaving one with the impression of spelunking through one of Liberace's more extreme nightmares. Other restaurants may aspire to decorate with antiques or nostalgic objects, but they simply can't compete with the quality and sheer tackiness of Beppo's haul. Highlights of the San Jose restaurant included:

• A lobby filled with plastic Roman religious trinkets of the type that most of us couldn't take through customs without causing an international incident - benevolently grinning Pope dolls, ashtrays skillfully using the colonnades of St. Peter's to form their sides and boxing nun puppets.
• Profiles of "Miss Buca", always a frumpy, overweight example of womanhood with spectacularly mundane accomplishments
• A wall shrine to Frank Sinatra flanked by lava lamps
• Gift certificates inviting one to "Give the gift of garlic breath!"
• Delightfully decorated bathrooms, including a plaque sporting a 40's vintage woman with wrinkled nose proclaiming that "someone has soiled the air!" and offering advice on dealing with this delicate etiquette issue.

Buca DI Beppo has branches nationwide. See their website for more details.