Manga!

One of our favourite restaurants to visit once a year or so is Buca di Beppo. Have you ever been to one of these restaurants? If not, and your in the vicinity of one, please treat yourself. Thankfully, someone had the divine inspiration to ask my parent's during this visit if we had ever taken them, and even more "thankfullier" they hadn't ever been. Oh, the shame and the horror!!

So, we remedied that situation pronto and took them to Beppo's for dinner on Vet's Day.

The beauty of the Beppo is that everything on the menu is Italian & served family style.

It's expense is right in line with usual casual dining--including 5 dishes, 4 drinks, and 1 dessert for Ri, including the tip was about $15/person.

And we still had enough food left over for two lunches for Moose!

Now when they say that a dish serves 2-3 people--they really mean that by the time you order 3-4 items on the menu, you'll still be taking a boat load of food home.

As you can see, it's just as famous for it's atmosphere as it is it's food.

Well, if some dodo brain (me) would have remembered to take a picture of the food, then you could have seen, eh? The list of delicacies included prosciutto and mozza stuffed chicken breasts in pesto sauce, an autumn salad with apples, walnuts, cranberries, and gorgonzola, baked ziti with spicy Italian sausage, garlic mash, and green beans.

Num, num, num!!

Back to the decor though...

Here is the infamous "Pope's Table" (it seats 12,of course.)

When we first started going to Beppo's, the bust was of Pope John Paul II.

Now you can see that they've actually changed the bust to resemble Pope Benedict XVI

The coved ceiling isn't quite the Sistine Chapel now, is it, but it's sweet.

Then there are the posters plastered everywhere...we were dining in the room with the Italian movie posters on the ceiling.

And, although i couldn't get a picture of the framed Maidenform bra with all the framed adverts for it from the first years of it's inception, i was able to get a couple shots of these pieces. I think they're a riot, but maybe that's only because of my medical field background and my affinity for the word "caca".

And of course, if the wait list is a mile long and the lobby is full, you always have this beautiful view to dazzle you while your table is readied.