There was no Little Italy near the small suburb of Dallas where I grew up. Instead, there wasAmong my classmates, Buca di Beppo was the go-to destination for birthday parties. The atmosphere was always raucous, the platters of food were so massive that they demanded sharing, and ogling at the sundry black-and-white photos of Italian wrestlers and spaghetti-eating contests that crowded the walls was as much a part of the experience as the actual dining.
Roberts saw an opportunity not just to re-create those bygone red sauce joints, but to present the most exaggerated, over-the-top version of them, to create an environment where people could feel totally comfortable—as he describes it, “a sleeves-up restaurant where you don’t have to tie your sweater around your neck and blow air kisses throughout the dining room. I wanted a restaurant people could look down on.
There were other Italian chains coming up around the same time. Olive Garden, founded in 1982, sought to bring sunny, villa-soaked Tuscany to suburban towns; and Macaroni Grill, started in 1988, centered on Mediterranean culture. But Buca was unique in that it wasn’t trying to transport people to Italy, or bring any sense of authenticity.
“The idea was to bring legitimacy,” Micatrotto says, his voice booming into the phone. “Phil’s edginess and tongue-in-cheek stuff, I enjoyed that. But the difference is that I lived that. He didn’t.” Corners were being cut in food preparation. “Instead of starting with your San Marzano tomatoes and chopping them up, you were getting a package of marinara sauce and dumping it into a steam kettle,” Roberts says with a sigh. The quality was slipping; the customers were noticing. And 9/11. And the Atkins Diet. And, and, and. Things were not looking good for Buca.
The chain is now a private company and profitable again, with 77 restaurants in 24 states , Earl proudly told me over the phone. The top-grossing location is Honolulu—the kind of place where red sauce is just about as novel as it gets.
Chain
BEEP HOLE
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