Buon Gusto (Brighton, MI)

My wife and I had dinner at Buon Gusto on Saturday night. We sat outside on the new patio - which is very nice. Unfortunately the meal wasn't as good.

We should have known that things wouldn't be as good as we hoped when the bread arrived to the table. It was four pieces of stiff, cold bread w/ some sort of Parmesan cheese quasi-melted on the bread. And there was no olive oil or butter served w/ the bread. Not a very good start to a meal at an Italian restaurant. Each of our entrees was served w/a side salad.

I ordered the Chicken Caprese, which was decent, but nothing to write home about. It was served w/a side of rigatoni and meat sauce, and the meat sauce seemed to be very bland. My wife ordered the tortellini w/ marinara - only she ended up receiving gnocchi w/ meat sauce. Eventually another server noticed the mistake - b/c her table was missing a gnocchi. She quickly brought out the correct meal. The tortellini were no better than the frozen kind that you can buy at the grocery store, and the marinara was essentially Ragu. A real disappointment. Also, the Parmesan cheese brought to the table was in a jar - which is another clue that Buon Gusto isn't a very good Italian restaurant. When we go out to eat at an Italian place, we expect to be offered fresh Parmesan. And to top things off, our server never checked up on us. We both finished our meals, and she dropped off the check. She never acknowledge that my wife received the wrong meal, or asked us how the food was.

Overall, it was a real disappointing meal. We'd had lunch at Buon Gusto about a year ago, and the meal was very good. So we entered dinner w/ high hopes - we won't be returning for dinner any time soon. Small portions, bland sauces, below average bread, inattentive service, etc. On the bright side, Buon Gusto did recently get their liquor license.

www.vivianocatering.com