Prezzo Italian Restaurant Braintree — Restaurant in Braintree

Used to be so much better.......

I remember going to various Prezzos years a go and this was by far the least positive of visits. My wife and father-in-law went for an evening meal on 18/07/2022 and it was one of the hottest days of the year. They had good working air-con, so we were, like other diners there, happy to have some cooler air.

The server greeted us and asked if we wanted anything. The first request was, as you can imagine, a large jug of tap water for everyone as my wife was slowly melting in the corner. We ordered some other drinks. She came back a few minutes later and took our orders for starters and mains. No drinks yet, wife turning more red.

Starters came, mine was deep-fried mozzarella which was pretty good!

Wife: "Can we at least get some water please?" as she was trying to keep focus and consciousness.

Waitress. "Sure no problem".

It kind of was a problem at that point as you would have thought that on the hottest day of the year to that point the manager's brief should have been along the lines of "Make sure everyone gets water, I don't want anyone dehydrated today!". Apparently not according to the feathers now coming out of my wife's mouth.

Waitress comes back with ordered drinks...still no water. I think she noticed that my wife had seemed to have lost 2 stone since last time she saw her and went and run a tap into a carafe. Finally!

Mains:

Carbonara with additional Chicken.

Tragic.

Apart from spending an extra £2.50 on a quarter of a chicken breast, it was very tasteless. It was just spaghetti in a cream sauce and I doubt there was a single egg in the carbonara. What made it slightly worse is that when ordering, I was asked if I wanted Parmesan with it. I said yes. What was on top can only be described as grated soft mild Cheddar. I know it was hot but I dont think an Italian hard cheese looks and tastes like bland Plasticine shavings. I wish I had a picture to show you.

Did not stay for dessert.

The quality of the meals was not the fault of the employees as they are just doing what they are trained so the poor carbonara is a reflection of the stock sourced by the managing company. But a glass of water, or even a drink on the table before the starters came out would have been a nice touch.

I should have made a compliant. Did I? No; standard British response.

So I probably won't visit again for a while, not while there are nicer Italian microwave meals available at supermarkets and while I have a running tap less than 5...

Food was good but service from the manager was awful, put a downer on my friends birthday meal. My friend wanted a starter as a main course due to various allergy restrictions and we asked the manager when we ordered if we can still have this on the tastecard offer (2 for 1) as a main dish and she said yes. When it came to paying the bill she went back on this and said we couldn’t have the tastecard offer. If she had told us this at the beginning when we checked with her we would’ve just ordered a main, rather than the starter. Complete computer says no moment. She could’ve admitted she was in the wrong and removed the dish from our bill but she didn’t. Instead she was extremely patronising, inferring that we were stupid, saying that WE misunderstood HER and that we clearly don’t ‘understand’ the offer. Yes we do, that’s why we checked with her at the beginning. We argued our case but agreed to pay in the end because we had to be somewhere. What happened to the customer is always right? Why say yes to us in the first place? Awful and rude service, despite knowing it was a birthday meal!. I worked as a waitress for four years and we always strived to make the customer happy, even giving free desserts on birthdays yet this woman wouldn’t even take the starter off our bill for the tastecard offer even though she said at the beginning she would! Working in the hospital industry I would never make promises that I didn’t plan on keeping. Won’t be returning, absolutely flabbergasted at the rudeness of...

Went on a Monday evening, restaurant was quite, didn't take no time to be seated but a fair wait to take our drinks and food order, they had no lemonade and no garnish for my cocktail but didn't tell me until they was presenting me my plain cocktail which cost me £10.. our food order arrived super quick, we had no additional offer of parmasan cheese, but mine was meant to be creamy, so didn't ask.. to say I'm disappointed for my plain looking and tasting pasta in a bowl for £16 is an understatement, I had to add salt & pepper, found approx. 3 pieces of chicken and approx 3 pieces of sun-dried tomatoes in there somewhere but that was it, so over priced for what I actually received; there pasta dishes have really gone down hill, as had the same issue 3 weeks ago with my Prawn spaghetti! That said the Pizza's, Calzone's, chips, salad and olives are lovely! I should have learnt my lesson, I forgot why I didn't want the spaghetti and as soon as my pasta came out, I remembered why! I definitely had food envy for sure. Staff were warming and friendly, just a bit absent, we ordered another drink part way through and this arrived after we had finished, which did help us in getting the bill...