Bufi Finchley
84 High Rd, London N2 9PN
Book here.
Bufi Finchley, as well as its sister location in Shoreditch, serves traditional Italian food, pastas and pizza that they cook in a traditional wood fired oven.
The restaurant is nice and the staff are friendly, but they are not Italian and don’t seem to have much knowledge of Italian cuisine. This, to begin with, is a big no-no. The staff of a restaurant are at all times the face of the product they are selling and should be passionate and have a high level of knowledge about the roots of the cuisine they are representing. I do enjoy talking to the waiters about what they have to offer, what’s in season, and what the specialties are and why. I have traveled the world and stayed for long periods of time in different cities so I also like to go to specific restaurants and chat to the waiters about their countries of origin.
That’s really what we are looking for when we go for dinner to a foreign cuisine restaurant to feel like we are, just for a couple hours, in a different part of the world. But I won’t get any of this here tonight. The staff are lovely but you don’t get the feeling you are in an Italian restaurant at all, and anyone that has visited or lived in Italy for a while will agree that this is noting like a proper authentic Italian restaurant, with the vibrant uproar of the waiters running around and making suggestions to you.
It’s not my first rodeo at Bufi and I never get it wrong when I go with the pizzas, but the actual elaborate dishes, that’s a horse of a different colour. Recommended by my friend and foodie Ben for its convenient location if you’re around Finchley, this time I ordered the homemade lasagna and the fried calzone, both left me singing the blues. We couldn’t find the bechamel in the lasagna so it was dry as a bone. The calzone didn’t contain some of the ingredients we had specifically ordered. The staff were kind and offered to make another one for us, but we couldn’t be bothered to wait as we had the rest of our order already on the table. The dough was crunchy and tasty but the inside was lacking fillings, so you feel like you’re only having crust and in the end we didn’t even finish it.
It’s not expensive at all but it’s never good value if you don’t end up eating it.
The outcome… A few more calories in my belly and a few more pounds out of my pocket, but nothing else. If I do make a return visit, I will be sticking to a good old trusty pizza.
