If you have never been to Buca’s it is a family style Italian Restaurant.  Family style means you order large plates of food to share with everyone at your table. I have had a few experiences at Buca’s Station Square Restaurant.  I will share with you some feedback I gave them about those experiences as well as my last trip there with photo’s of some of the food.

I decided one day recently to post a comment on their facebook wall about the experiences I had.
I have been to Bucas a couple times In Pittsburgh. The first time the food was good, service was ok, went for my nephews birthday and he loved it! The second time all was good. The last time we went for husband and my birthday for which we made reservations for my family. The servers weren’t helpful, took forever …to get our food and when asked about hubby’s and my birthday celebration they gave us trouble about 2 pieces of cake. So we wound up getting 2 small cupcakes I believe and while they sang to other adult groups that night they just walked away from us. I haven’t been back since.
I wasn’t really expecting a response but I received this via email:
Thank you for contacting us on facebook.  We sincerely apologize for your dining experience at our Station Square location.  We have forwarded your letter to the Paisano Partner (our restaurant manager) for that restaurant.  They will contact you directly. We always appreciate opportunities to better serve our guests.
I said nothing in return and 3 days later received this:


As the Chef Partner of Buca di Beppo Station Square I would first off like to apologize for your disappointment on your last visit.  I will definitely utilize your feedback as a coaching tool with my staff, particularly in that they did not sing our birthday song for you.
In regards to the birthday cake, we do utilize our birthday cupcake for all birthdays/anniversaries in the restaurant, and have not had the birthday wedge for about  a year.
Regarding facebook, we do not utilize the site for normal communication so that we are able to personally converse with you and other guests from each of our locations.

To clear up what I was complaining about:
 They advertise a free celebration cake or cupcake or whatever if its within so many days of your birthday.  Hubby and I are 5 days apart.  They didn’t want to give us BOTH the stupid cupcake.  No one bothered to ask me to clarify any of what I said.


Whatever.  Really.  Utilize my feedback as a coaching tool.  Well please not just for the birthday song how about how rude they were.  The fact that they didn’t seem to care we were there.  We made reservations in advance and got stuck in a small booth i
n a crowded room of people they took care of much better than us.

So my sister makes reservations for my nephews communion.  It was her and her two kids, my parents, my sister and boyfriend, and my family of 5.  That’s 12 people.  They put us in a room on the top floor with a booth and a table next to it.  Across the way is one of those big round tables that would have better suited us, which no one used the entire time we were there.  They filled the other booth in our room as well as the other table with a small family birthday party.  Once these other guests were there, they forgot about us. Our server forgot quiet a few things.  We had to ask for bread, never got dipping oil.  We ordered what we wanted and she told us about one of the items being hot and spicy (cause we had kids) and we told her it was for the adults.  We ordered wedding soup for the kids however and she failed to mention that it was hot and spicy.  They put ground up hot sausage in wedding soup?  It had the be the weirdest version of wedding soup I ever had.


We got Spaghetti and Meatballs for the younger kids.  They love it and the meatballs are huge!


My favorite dish is the Eggplant.  It has a bit much of chunks of tomato for my taste but that’s easy to remedy by scraping it off.  I just wish there was more for me to eat.


Last we ordered Stuffed Shells.  Now I don’t know about everyone else but stuffed shells are typically made the same way almost everywhere.  It had spinach in it, which I have made them with at home and love.  But these just tasted like the funkiest things I’ve ever had.  And I don’t mean funky cool.  I mean funky it tastes like a foot was bathed in the water the shells were boiled in.

Of coarse we had dessert.  My sister ordered the $30 celebration cake that was so big we shared with another table near us.  I have to say though the cake is sooo damn good!
They gave us $10 off a return visit but honestly I think they are over rated and I don’t think I will return unless someone in the family does an event there again.


Buca di Beppo on Urbanspoon