For 15 years, Bucatini has demonstrated that to be successful, a restaurant doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Co-owner and manager Soemi Caramel sticks to a simpler “formula”: Charge a fair price for good, authentic Italian regional cuisine made with high-quality, healthful ingredients – organic and local whenever possible – prepared and served by people who genuinely care. “It’s honest food for normal people,” says Caramel, who hails originally from the Italian city of Treviso, near Venice. “I use as much organic meat and produce as possible. We’ve served organic chicken and eggs for years. We get a lot of fish from the Santa Barbara Channel. I eat here myself, and I want to know what I’m eating.”

Whether seated in the intimate dining room or on the expansive patio, Bucatini customers can get most anything they want. That might mean wine from Italy or California, or a cocktail from the menu of fifty classic specialty drinks, twenty house martinis, a dozen alcohol-free choices, and margaritas and mojitos made with bartender Eddie Chavez’s own infused liquors.

The extensive menu includes antipasti, 25 pizzas and 20 pastas, among them classics like pesto, Bolognese, carbonara, puttanesca and a seafood-and-red-sauce linguinette ai crostacei. (And who else offers imported Italian gluten-free rice pasta?) There are bruschetta, carpaccio and sautéed mussels; pizza from the wood-burning oven; and a range of grilled, sautéed and roasted meats and fish.
The fact that locals come back again and again is proof that Bucatini’s deceptively simple formula works.

Bucatini • 436 State Street • 805.957.4177