Ciciana Restaurant - Kasavanahalli — Restaurant in Bengaluru

There’s a reason why Italian cuisine is expensive in India - it is because the ingredients don’t come cheap. The quality of the produce is very characteristic to this cuisine. And this is where Ciciana fails miserably. The expectation is not that the produce should be sourced from Southern Italy. Instead it is a very normal ask to try and use matching ingredients that can be procured locally. For eg. bruschetta must be made with cherry tomatoes; there can never be any reason good enough for using chopped up hybrid tomatoes to make a caprese bruschetta. Similarly, the use of finely grated Parmesan cheese in Italian pastas is non-negotiable; I don’t know how the brand is working their costing…they’ve clearly not factored in the cheese. And without it, the pasta just doesn’t make the cut irrespective of however many colours of capsicum, broccoli, and zucchini have been added to the sauce. And again, the swapping of cherry tomatoes with hybrid ones for the arabiata sauce was obviously expected after the bruschetta; but hope was still on (for goodness to prevail) to be broken down with the first taste. The spaghetti was cooked al-dente to perfection though. The place has been very enthusiastically done up; I just hope someone paid attention to the food as enthusiastically too. I also hope the brand manages to fix these basic errors and give their food a more robust Italian character, or stop calling themselves an Italian restaurant…there’s absolutely no harm in calling oneself a pizza-n-pasta place that specialises in chicken makhni/chettinad pizza which I’m sure they’re already making well. Summarising my review: Food: Not Italian for sure Ambience: Very cute and...

Sunday morning spoilt!!

• Firstly, when we entered we were asked to not sit on the window side because it was reserved for a birthday party. But soon after sometime a group of 4 friends were allowed to sit there. -Secondly, we placed our first order by 11:30am and were told Breakfast would close soo. We tried placing another order by 11:50am but were told breakfast was closed.(Timings mentioned at restaurant -till12pm)
• To our surprise, two tables were shared the breakfast menu post denying us the order on premise of breakfast time closed. -We tried complaining the Manager/ owner the same, and she told she would check and get back. But no response from her too till the time we got the bill and we returned it to remove Rs 10 service charge which ofcourse was symbolic of our experience there.
• Then finally, she came and said the waiter was new and he has been instructed to not do this in future, but i dont agree to the explanation because he went inside, consulted others and then came back to say no.

Dining in anywhere is equally about food, experience and service, and apart from food sorry to say but rest everything...

Dined at Ciciana earlier this week with my husband and child, and we were pleasantly surprised at how good the food was. We went there not expecting too much, but were very impressed (and of course promised to visit again soon). The place is bright, beautiful and has a lot of seating options. Since we went on a weekday for lunch, it was almost empty. For appetisers, we chose to have minestrone soup, calamari & prawn fritto and crispy peri peri fries. And for mains we had garlic lemon prawns with dill pesto, pepperoni pizza & BBQ chicken. Everything tasted great and was perfectly seasoned & spiced. The minestrone soup and calamari-prawn fritto were the stars for me. My daughter loved the pepperoni pizza and husband relished the BBQ chicken (which is half a chicken). I had the bloody apple mocktail to drink but it wasn’t impressive. Served at room temperature but I would have liked it chilled or with ice. But the food made up for it. Service was quick and the server was very efficient. Pricing is definitely a plus here since everything is...