Buca Di Beppo, Garden Grove, CA

I got to my hotel late this afternoon and noticed this restaurant on the parking lot. It claimed to be Italian. I asked the front desk guy who checked me in, and he said it was good, and then looked on the desk, and gave me a $10 off card for the place.

I checked it out. I got there at 1740 and got in immediately. When I left at 1855, there were a couple people waiting, even though there were tables open. Who knows.

This restaurant is another family-style place that serves HUGE quantities of food. The good news is that they have “small” and “large” sizes, which really translates to “large” and “huge”.

My server told me that since I was by myself, I could order from the lunch menu, with portion sizes approaching normalcy. But the lunch menu didn’t have what I wanted, so I went with the “small” size.

I ordered garlic bread to start, followed by Chicken Marsala and a side of Fettuccine Alfredo.

The garlic bread was probably an entire load of french bread that had been converted to garlic bread. It was perfect, crusty and rough textured, and with a perfect amount of garlic. The server brought some olive oil to dip the bread in. I asked for Balsamic vinegar, and it was brought immediately. The server mentioned that you had to ask for it.

The Chicken Marsala “Small” ended up being three decent sized breasts, plump and juicy. There was a lot of Marsala sauce, it was sweeter than I am used to. The Marsala had a fruity aftertaste to it. The dish came with some very large mushrooms that were also pretty good.

The “side” of fettuccine was a soup bowl filled with noodles. There was not a lot of alfredo on the noodles, but it wasn’t too bad.

With the $10 discount, my check was $37.72.

I managed to put away all of the chicken and noodles, and about a quarter of the bread. It was all good.

Tags: Buca Di Beppo, CA, Garden Grove, Restaurants