An Open Letter Re: Bertucci's
Picture this: it’s Friday, the night is young, and you want to go out to eat. But you still want to stay close to home, and spend as little as possible (it wouldn’t hurt to have the guise of a somewhat upscale meal either). You peruse Google Maps for nearby options, and the first result that pops up is a certain Italian chain restaurant. Bertucci’s, parked in a prime location in the middle of Lexington’s town center, celebrates “40 years of brick oven pizza & pasta.”
Allow me to make this absolutely clear: there is nothing to celebrate, and their unfavorable 2.3 stars on Yelp seem to agree. Overpriced entrées? Hasty, underpaid, and often unpresent waiters? Not to mention their takeout situation, which is a nightmare—without fail, when you pick up your order, the paper bag is sure to be “soggy and collapsing,” notes Melissa S. And I have to admire their incredible propensity for somehow mixing orders up every single time. Order a pasta with no cheese, and lo and behold, here’s your shrimp scampi with a generous layer of parmesan atop. A chicken piccata yields something crusty and sizzling in a baked dish. I’ve had cannolis delivered to my table as a bowl of vanilla ice cream. It’s almost laughable how consistently incompetent their serving ability is.
But one day, a photo of a smiling chef greeted me on the cover of the “new and improved” menu. There’s hope yet, I thought. Maybe some new recipes would do them good—revive the kitchen, and infuse life into the establishment. So I chose a trendy option, the Rigatoni Alla Vodka. A creamy, spicy tomato sauce is topped with crispy pepperoni in this “fantastic” dish, the menu proclaimed. It sounded promising.
Well, it wasn’t. Unfortunately, I should have known better than to trust Bertucci’s. The waiter, after more than an hour’s wait, hailed a searing hot plate of watery pasta with a paltry sprinkle of pepperoni. Even menu revamps and shifts of ownership couldn’t save the restaurant, leaving its already meager number of customers with sad attempts at a new look, each revised dish iteration worse than its predecessor. A pizza arrived “half hot, half NOT,” claimed one upset customer on Yelp; “time to shut down folks,” advised another. Such is the way of the failing restaurant, I suppose.
Just when I thought the restaurant couldn’t get any worse, as some kind of cute gimmick—or perhaps a distraction from their awful food—they give out pizza dough to children. That’s right: raw dough, made of raw flour and raw yeast. These little packages of E. coli and other myriad germs and bacteria are hand-delivered to the grubby paws of little tots just waiting to cram the squishy stuff into their mouths. Sure, I get that it’s supposed to be fun for the kids, but they might as well serve them salmonella on a silver platter.
They’ve got one redeemable factor though: their baskets of warm, crusty bread that greet every table like a silver parachute sent from the heavens above. Complimented with a heavily seasoned garlic oil, the bread rolls are really all you need to sustain even the fussiest of palates. Except when the rolls are cold and doughy—which, needless to say, is more often than you’d think. Like a bandaid in the face of an amputated limb, a few strategically placed bread baskets will not save Bertucci’s.
And in fact, some time in the last few months, the establishment quietly shut down. Now, the begrudging staple of Lexington center is barren, signless, and empty. And there’s nary a complaint to be heard from the Lexington community—certainly not any of the pomp and circumstance that would arise if, say, a Panera were to shut down in the center (we were robbed!). I mean, a night of half-baked pasta entrees, vaguely European dishes, and consistently incorrect orders? Sounds delightful! Unless, that is, there was an infinite breadth of fantastic restaurants with better food and better service just waiting to replace this one.
On a Facebook thread lamenting the shutdown, supporters of the closure abound. “Terrible food and service” seems to be the overwhelming opinion. One creative Lexington citizen dubbed it “Slowtucci’s.” A former manager, in a memorial-reminiscent comment, said, “We have been trying our hardest to appease the constant negativity we were getting from the general public daily.” Is it rude to say, standing over their grave, that it was deserved?
by JANET LIU