PizzaExpress — Restaurant in Basildon

Good food, good waitress TERRIBLE service.

We visited for our Christmas work meal with about 11 people and I just want to start by saying out waitress was actually very nice and helpful and tried her best. And that is the only good part about the visit or this review.

We all ordered our starters and one didn't show up but after telling the waitress it was immediately brought out. We then waited over an hour for our mains to be brought out.

Now this is the worst part, one of our group has a severe allergy to eggs and nuts. We informed the waitress before the meal and before dessert and not one person ,including the manager, knew what foods were and were not safe. Before dessert we asked what had nuts in to a different waitress. She scoffed, huffed, walked away without saying anything and came back with a manager. The manager looked through their pizza express allergy book for over 5 minutes, couldn't find the desserts page, then put the 50 PLUS PAGE BOOK in front of the person with allergies and told him to find it himself. Nothing was ordered or obvious but when we didn't find a couple of desserts they had egg in them. This was disgusting and dangerous service. Because nothing was ordered in the boom he had to just order ice cream to he safe. Desserts took yet another hour to be served.

Finally after over 2 and a half hours we were given our bill.... which was over £300! We asked them to double check it and when they brought it back it was £180! How do you get a bill that wrong.

Again the waitress did her best and was the only good thing about the meal but the other waitress and lady who looked like a manager were absolutely shocking and should not be in a service role or environment. Or at the very least should undergo training to learn how to deal with customers and what allergy information is associated with the food before...

Our group ate here Sunday after we made a booking to eat in - they couldn't find our booking but we managed to get a table. Once sat down, we waited 45 minutes to receive our starters and then a further 50 minutes for our main meals to come. We noticed that the staff and chefs were highly prioritising the delivery orders before attending to their customers sitting in the restaurant. I wouldn't say it was understaffed at all either - three cooks and at least five waiters. I personally asked the waitress for a soft drink to be added to our order, which I waited 20 minutes to receive and a coffee later on which took an additional 30 minutes to get - they did remove this from the final bill... While waiting for our food, we could see the waiters/waitresses arguing with the chef's and complaining with eachother. When we got our food the pizzas were burnt around the edges and the kids meal pasta was undercooked - we thought best not to send it back and be waiting a further hour so left most of the meal. As we were leaving we realised that we were not offered the kids meal dessert but again thought we did not bother asking for it as we were fed up of being there so long.

We were very disappointed with the visit we had to this particular pizza express and if I could give this rating less than 1 star, I honestly would.

I hope whoever reads the experience we had at this pizza express takes our views into consideration before going here and if you do decide to dine in there, I hope your experience is...

Went here the other day didn’t book as when I tried to book online it was saying error and to call up the restaurant; Restaurant was not picking up after trying all day, so I decided to do a walk in. I needed a table for 7. Upon arriving I just felt not welcoming by the front house lady. She bluntly says “have you booked?, we do not have that big table to accommodate for such a large group, we are fully booked”. Just standing there waiting for me to leave… (not saying another word.. ) bit baffled on how she was I then suggested to split the tables to a table of 3 and a 4 (2 families which consist of 2 adults and 5 children). Me saying this, she ends up pushing a single table to a table of 4 and shows me where to sit. It wasn’t really hard was it to do that in the first place? Instead of pushing customers away you should be pulling them in (large group or not). I am from an asian background so maybe this had something to do with it, but who knows?! (- 1 star) When walking into the restaurant I did see many empty tables for 4 people and only 2 large group tables at the front of the restaurant. Not really accommodating for large groups. (-1 star) 3 stars for the other staff who were great, waitress was excellent and food was nice,...