- Buca di Beppo is a cult-favorite Italian-American restaurant chain.
- Growing up in a Chinese-American household, the only spaghetti I encountered was at friends' houses or on TV.
- As an adult, I finally learned about Buca di Beppo and my red-sauce dreams were reignited. My first meal there was full of highs and lows, but it inspired me to continue my search for the perfect plate of spaghetti.
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If Hollywood is to be believed, Italian-American restaurants are where life happens.
As a kid watching these movies, I could almost smell the red sauce through the screen. I'd had spaghetti once at my neighbor's house, and it was everything my Chinese immigrant mom never let me eat: meaty, carby, and greasy. We never ate at restaurants, and dinner at home was usually rice, veggies, and maybe some pork bits tossed in there for flavor.
My mom, who grew up in a labor camp during a famine, then had a particular attitude towards food: you have it, so stop complaining. One day, she finally yielded to my relentless begging for spaghetti, dumped a can of tomato chunks onto some boiled noodles, and that was that. (Love you, Mom!)
I first learned about Buca di Beppo at the ripe old age of 24. My friends, who were shocked, tried to explain it to me: Italian-ish food, big portions, chain restaurant. From this description, I failed to see how it was different from Olive Garden. Oh, how wrong I was.
Less than a year later, I found myself on a pilgrimage to the meatball mecca itself with retail's visual features fellow Priscilla Zhu. Here's how our journey went.