Italy in a Big Way

“After eating this great food, I’ve totally changed my perspective,” gushed our young waitress. “I’ll never be satisfied with the Olive Garden again.”

This was at Buca di Beppo, an Italian chain restaurant featuring immense platters of old-fashioned red-sauce-and-garlic Southern Italian food, presented in a good-humoredly outrageous, over-the-top way. When you pull up to the parking valet, you see a cutout of a grinning little man holding a sign reading, “Parka u car?”

And if that doesn’t give you an idea of what Buca is all about, you’ll find out soon enough.

You enter the suite of dining rooms through a busy kitchen, which actually has two tables--for anyone who can take dining in a madhouse. The sight of the dishes will make your eyes pop, because they’re family-style portions, many of them big enough to feed six or more.

The interior looks like “The Phantom of the Opera” as conceived by Yogi Berra. The walls are blanketed with Italian American icons and images, sacred and profane: Sinatra, DiMaggio, Lombardi, Capone--even Mama Celeste. Italian oldies like “O Sole Mio” and “Come Fly With Me” are playing continuously in the background. Christmas tree lights are strung over the archways.

On top of that, each of the little separate dining areas has a theme. Perhaps the most outrageous one, the Pope’s Table, features Romanesque columns and a rotating bust of the pope in a glass box smack in the center of the table. Then there’s the Cardinal’s Room, where the decorations include church vestments.

As you can guess, this is not a restaurant for anybody who takes life too seriously. It’s all in good, infectious fun.

The tables are covered with red-and-white checkered cloths and paper place mats imprinted with a map of Italy, just as in an old-fashioned neighborhood Italian restaurant. The menu is not handed to you but rather is painted on the wall, fresco-style. (I can’t say I find this last part so cute. Depending on where you’re seated, it may not be entirely visible.)

Now, unless you’ve come in a large group, it’s best to order small. Buca’s portions are bigger than your Sicilian grandmother ever dreamed, and you need a really big appetite--or a really big dog back home--to take on this menu. Order injudiciously and you’ll be eating the leftovers for a week.

The best antipasti are the roasted peppers with shaved garlic and anchovies and the crunchy fried calamari, which must have come from a giant squid--the pieces are Buca-huge.

There’s a mixed green salad with sliced prosciutto and provolone; it comes piled more than a foot high on a huge platter. The “small” Caesar salad is football-sized but not as well-conceived. Buca di Beppo Caesar employs a creamy dressing without much kick, way too much grated cheese and croutons the size of golf balls.

The thin-crusted pizzas are terrific, skateboard-sized pies. They’re probably the best things the restaurant has to offer. Pizza arrabbiata is made with four cheeses, pepperoni, sausage and caramelized onions. It wasn’t as spicy as our waitress implied, but it was served with a cruet of pepper-infused oil to kick it up a notch. To borrow a phrase, bam!

Pizza vegetali rustica is topped with eggplant, escarole, onions, tomatoes, artichokes, broccoli and provolone. Another pizza topping I really like is Calabrese: a peasanty combination of tomatoes, potatoes, rosemary, olives, onions, prosciutto and pecorino (sheep’s-milk cheese).

The pastas are also immense; even a small order will feed four hungry people. The most popular dish here is the homemade ravioli. You get a whopping 20 ravs to an order, each chewy pocket of dough filled with a surprisingly light blend of ricotta and goat cheese. It comes with your choice of sauces, marinara or a quite meaty meat sauce.

The spaghetti amatriciana may skimp a bit on the Italian bacon but the pasta itself is pleasantly al dente. It comes with plenty of chopped tomatoes, red onions and pecorino. There are richly satisfying tortelloni filled with ground veal and blanketed with a cream sauce full of mushrooms, peas and broccoli. The linguine clam sauce is fine, too, ringed by dozens of tiny steamed clams.

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Meat entrees are more restrained, but not by much. The best, for my money, would be Buca chicken Vesuvio, a whole chicken sauteed in pieces mixed with a huge amount of white beans, sausage and potatoes.

The eggplant parmigiana is thickly breaded but quite flavorful. Among the veal dishes, you can find bland but well-made veal Marsala and a less appealing dish called veal limone: four rather chewy breaded veal medallions on a big pile of escarole and undercooked white beans.

If you aren’t ready to throw in the towel by now, there are several desserts you may want to try. Buca makes top-notch tiramisu: layers of mascarpone cream, rum-soaked ladyfingers and chocolate shavings served in a big glass bowl. Bread pudding caramello is eggy and sweet, laced with rivulets of melted caramel and chocolate. There is also the uncharacteristically sensible option of Limoncello, a light, refreshing lemon liqueur.

Just as we started on our bottle of Limoncello, we got a second opinion on Buca from the waitress who’d just taken over our table. “I don’t much eat Italian food anymore,” she whispered. Too much of a good thing, maybe.

Buca di Beppo is expensive. All dishes are served family-style, and range from $3.95 to $23.95.

BE THERE

Buca di Beppo, 1609 E. Imperial Highway, Brea. (714) 529-6262. Open 5-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday, 4-11 p.m. Saturday, noon-10 p.m. Sunday. All major cards.