U. D. restaurant’s consistency earns customer loyalty
UPPER DARBY — How good is the food at Bona Cucina, Pat Buonadonna’s 70- seat Italian eatery in Upper Darby?
Bunoadonna’s wife, Frankie, runs the front of the house, and on a recent Friday night before dinner service she related a story about a handsome young man who was planning to propose to his girlfriend.
“He really was a good- looking guy,” Frankie said. “When the girl came in, she really wasn’t so good looking.”
The ring came out from the kitchen and the restaurant’s patrons stood to get a look at what could have been the beginning of a long life together. Instead, the girl said no and pocketed the ring. The young man was visibly devastated, Frankie said.
What does this have to do with the quality of Buonadonna’s cooking?
“They both stayed and had dinner,” Frankie said.
Bona Cucina opened under Pat Buonadonna in 1985, when the self- taught cook was just 19 years old. Having worked in kitchens since he was 13, and with a lengthy family history in food service, Buonadonna felt he was ready to get into the business.
“I more or less knew I was getting into the restaurant business because not only did I grow up with it, but it’s something I always wanted to do,” Buonadonna, 46, said. His great- grandfather, an Italian immigrant, owned a Center City eatery beginning in the 1930s.
“He served roast beef and roast pork. It was a shot- and- a- beer kind of place,” he said. His grandfather took it over in the 1940s.
Starting as a dishwasher, Buonadonna worked his way up the line until he got hired at an American- style restaurant in Bryn Mawr to give the menu an “Italian flare,” he said. Shortly after, he opened Bona Cucina.
“When I first opened, I was just going to keep it small, with about 30 seats,” he said. Over the years, he expanded to the current 70 seats, but stopped serving lunch to focus on dinner after about two and a half years.
“I was completely out of my mind,” Buonadonna said of trying to do two meal services a day. The cash- only BYOB is open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner, from 5 p. m. until 9 p. m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, and from 5 p. m. until 10 p. m. on Friday and Saturday.
Buonadonna is the only person who works in the kitchen and Frankie runs the dining room with a staff of about five employees. His days begin at 9 a. m. taking deliveries and doing prep work for that night’s service. He is lucky to get home by 11 p. m. most nights.
On a recent visit to the restaurant, Buonadonna declined to allow a reporter or a photographer anywhere near his kitchen. His territorial attitude is not reserved for the press, though.
“He entered a contest a few years ago to see who could make the best scampi sauce in the area, and first prize was $ 10,000,” Frankie said. “The night before he dropped out because they told him they were going to videotape him making the sauce.”
His discipline in the kitchen is what he thinks has made him a success for the last 28 years.
“I like control of what I’m putting out,” Buonadonna said. “I see what’s going out of my kitchen. If I wouldn’t eat it, I wouldn’t send it out.”
His customers keep coming back, so he must be doing it right.
“I come here frequently,” said Bryn Mawr resident Pat Conroy, who stopped in for last Friday. “I eat here once or twice a month ... I know it’s going to be the same every time.”
She ordered a Caesar salad, which Frankie knows she likes with lots of dressing, and seafood Pasquale — shrimp sauteed with jumbo lump crab meat served with scampi linguine.
It’s customers like Conroy who make dining at Bona Cucina a unique experience.
“We know everyone’s name who comes in here,” Frankie said. “And if we don’t, we do before they leave.”
“I have a good clientele and a real strong following. I give it all to consistency,” Buonadonna said. “I know that if you came in 20 years ago, you’re getting the same product today. It tastes the same, and it was made by these same hands.”
Another thing that hasn’t changed much over the years are the prices on Buonadonna’s menu. He says he hasn’t raised them for at least 15 years. And the dishes on the menu have remained largely the same, though sometimes a special that does really well will become a permanent addition.
“If you come in here and spend $ 15 or $ 20, you’re getting you’re money’s worth, and you’re going to have a damn good meal. I guarantee you,” Buonadonna said.
The couple’s love story began after the restaurant opened. Together for 21 years, married for the last 15, Pat and Frankie are as much in love today as they were when she swore she would never work in the restaurant.
“I’ve never seen another couple so much in love as them,” said 18- year- old restaurant staffer Jess Crosby, who sees couples share romantic meals at Bona Cucina every night.
When they got married, though, Pat laid down his rules.
“We have an understanding,” Frankie said. “He’ll cook, and I won’t ask him how he does it.”
With Pat and Frankie working together, the atmosphere of the restaurant makes customers feel like they are part of the family.
“At chain restaurants, you don’t have that feeling,” Pat said. “I view it as you’re coming to my house and you’re going to have dinner.”
Pat’s mother worked in the dining room for years alongside Frankie, and now Pat and Frankie’s daughter, Kim Ward, works with her mother.
“It’s a lot easier with my wife here,” Pat said. “By the time you get home, get something to eat, grab and shower and go to bed, it’s time to come back again.”
Other employees have become members of the Buonadonna’s extended family. Crosby said working so closely with the owners makes her job more enjoyable than most.
“They’re like my second family,” Crosby, a student at Delaware County Community College, said. “Most people my age don’t like their job, but I do.” She works five nights a week after going to class during the day.
Pat rarely leaves the kitchen and has only come out to the dining room during dinner once, according to Frankie. When Upper Darby Mayor Tom Micozzie recently declared a “Bona Cucina Day” in the township, he came down to the restaurant with members of Upper Darby Council to present a plaque to him fro his years of work.
“He’s like Willy Wonka,” Crosby said of Pat. “Nobody ever sees him.”
But that day, his customers gave him an ovation lasting several minutes before he hurried back to the kitchen. That reception was indicative of the love diners have for not just the food at Bona Cucina, but the feel. Frankie says it all comes from Pat.
“If he should leave, this place is nothing,” she said. “It’s just tables and chairs.”