Prezzo Italian Restaurant Leicester Meridian — Restaurant in Blaby

Ended up at prezzo for my wife's birthday a bit randomly, as she thought it looked ok from the outside. Restaurant was rather busy, as you would expect on a Saturday night, but not full.

The welcome was slow, as we waited a good few minutes at the desk, and were greeted by a rather cold waitress, who sat us right next to a table of 6, despite other quieter ones available. A bit annoying. The other waitress who was looking after our table came by to get our drinks order. She was cold, looked irritated from the start, and borderline rude. Absolutely zero customer service in her. Kept dragging her feet when walking around the restaurant instead of walking like a normal person, which I find extremely irritating. My wife ordered a cocktail, and I opted for a glass of wine. Without being asked what size, I ended up with a large one. That's perhaps down to cultural differences, but I would have liked a regular. Kept it quiet as I didn't want to ruin my wife's dinner meal.

We ordered 2 starters. Italian meatballs and a bruschetta. The meatballs were good. The so called 'bruschetta' wasn't. It was a piece of pizza bread served with poorly cut, unripe, unseasoned tomatoes without any signs of onions or garlic, and served with some sort of pesto. Disappointing. We now move on to the meals. I had a large Gorgonzola & prosciutto pizza, whilst my wife had the spinach & ricotta cannelloni. Pizza was ok. The dough was good and correctly cooked. Not enough gorgonzola and prosciutto in my opinions (main ingredients according to the menu) and was served with balsamic onions that were overly sweet and quite overpowering for my liking. Rocket salad added a touch of welcome freshness to add some balance. Cannelloni was underwhelming. It was small, served with a thin sauce which didn't cover the pasta (supposedly 'fresh') that ended up being quite dry from the oven. Filling was unseasoned and felt a little on the dry side as well.

The overall service was pretty poor. 3 staff members felt a little too short despite not having a full restaurant, and the chef kept on ringing the bell several times before orders were being picked up for service. Waitress apologised for the wait when serving us though.

When we finished our plates, no one came to clear the table or ask if we wanted anything else. We then decided to get up and pay at the bar directly as a result.

To my surprise, there was a 10% tip hidden in the bill labelled 'Service charge'. This is just poor practice. Any customer who does not review the bill before paying will accept this tip unknowingly. I find it unacceptable to try to pass on an extra charge to your customers despite offering such a poor service and overall experience. At least have the decency to ask and label it correctly. The footnote reads as such : 'If you'd like to leave a tip, this will be shared with everyone working in our restaurant today, meaning nothing is kept by the business. A discretionary 10% service charge is automatically added to all tables.'

Tried it once,...

My wife and I had booked a table online for Sunday 26th June 2022 at 17.30 (we made the booking on Saturday 25th June) and also requested a booth advising that we are regulars. When we arrived we were told very directly by the manager David Theobold and with no apology that the request for a booth could not be met as he was going to use it for a table of four who it appeared had walked in off the street. We requested that we be sat away from children as we just wanted a quiet meal. We were offered a table with high seats or one at the end of the bench. We accepted the table for two at the end of the bench and and we were pointed in the direction of the table. However the table had not been cleared, set or food debris swept from under the table. Surely if you have made an advance booking a table it should be ready for your arrival? The table was made ready while we waited. I made my way to the men's room and on my return I noticed that a booth was about to come free as two ladies were about to leave. I pointed this out to David and he quite rudely flatly refused. I also did mention to him that the toilets were in a disgusting state. I took my seat and then suddenly David appeared. He rudely stated that this was our table for the night and did not appreciate the manner in which I had supposedly spoken to him and did we want to leave it for tonight! Both my wife and I were completely taken aback and felt very attacked. This was also heightened when he tapped another manager Ciprian on the shoulder as he approached us like he needed back up. We are a couple in our early 50's and have never been spoken to or treated with such contempt by anyone in a customer service/hospitality industry. I will go back to Prezzo as we enjoy the food and generally the servers are always friendly and helpful and we reward that on payment. Sadly though I will need to call before and make sure David Theobold is not in as we will not dine there when...

I have always had a positive experience with Prezzo; however, on our last visit, it was not amusing to be essentially forced out earlier than we had expected because our table had been booked out.

It was a fairly busy night, and we had booked a table for 5 pm. We arrived and ordered our starters and mains. We've finished our mains around 6.45pm and we're thinking about some pudding, but the staff are busy (it is busy, I don't blame them) but we're okay as we are chatting away. By the time the waitress can come, we've decided to give the puddings a miss purely based on wait time and how busy they are. We get one last round of drinks and ask for the bill at the same time. Now, once we get the bill, we book an Uber because there's five of us, and we're expecting a wait. When the waitress returns, we pay, and an uber confirms our job 19 minutes away). Lovely, plenty of time to nip toilet and finish our drinks before we head outside. Wrong. The waitress comes back a second later, looking mortified and says, "I'm sorry to do this, but they've booked this table out for 7." So long story short, we had to wait outside for 15 minutes in the cold weather; some of us needing the toilet, especially after needing to down our last drinks drinks. The annoying this is, it would have been fine if somebody had told us we only had 2 hours. We wouldn't have spent so much money on drinks and probably only ordered a main. I'm aware some places have a 2-hour limit in tables, but every restaurant I've been to has always alerted you of this on arrival. Not Prezzos, though, clearly.

Thing is, it's not as though we were planning on holding the table for hours on end. Just enough time to finish our drinks and let our food settle.

Aside from that, food is nice, albeit pricey, and the...