A Religious Experience

I prefer Buca di Beppo during the livelier dinner hour because the bright dining rooms — not that shadowy, stinky bar — are noisily festive. I attribute some of the more raucous customer behavior to overstimulation by the potent house Chianti and the zany décor. (Yes, it's contrived zany, but on the humorless Country Club Plaza, that's practically sacrilegious.) The night I dined with Marilyn and willowy Summer, we found something kind of comforting about all of the retro details. You don't find many modern Italian restaurants that still cling to red-and-white-checked tablecloths, paper place mats printed with the dinner menu, and dinners that don't pretend to be haute cuisine. The ravioli, spaghetti and parmigiana dishes at Buca are downright eye-talian.

The "garlic bread" needs to be more trashy Italian-American and less artistically rustic (cutting a slab was like sawing through plywood), but the salads are nice, especially a delicious heap of mixed greens, tart gorgonzola and crunchy bits of fried prosciutto. We had agreed to share two dishes because the "small" dinners feed between two and three people, but naturally, we couldn't agree on our choices. We had way too much food just so Summer could sample the ravioli blanketed with a surprisingly fresh pomodoro sauce and Marilyn could pile her plate with penne Cardinale smothered in cream sauce with chicken and artichokes. ("I heard it's what the cardinals like to eat," announced Elijah, our saintly waiter, though we weren't sure if he meant clergy or St. Louis baseball players.)

I sampled their suppers and shared my ravioli in thick meat sauce (each pasta pillow was the size and thickness of a new Coach wallet), but after the first flush of ravenous frenzy, I pooped out and asked for some take-home boxes. "But don't you want something sweet?" asked Elijah, proffering a dessert menu to Summer, who said she was full, then practically snapped it out of his hand.

The nine dessert choices cost as much as some of the smaller dinners, but then again, these are dolci designed for the Valley of the Giants, including a serving bowl filled with nearly enough tiramisu to feed the entire cast of The Sopranos. And it was excellent tiramisu, lusciously fluffy and creamy. We piled the stuff on our plates and — miracle of miracles — still had lots left over. I considered putting it in a carryout box, too, but my Catholic guilt got the best of me. Gluttony is a sin, after all, and right above Marilyn's head, I could see the image of Pope John Paul II coldly staring down at me from a commemorative china plate mounted on the wall.

Lord, I got the message.