Zizzi - Cambridge, Bene't Street — Restaurant in Cambridge

Booked a table in advance for pre-show dinner. Had to queue simply because there was no one seating customers. Service quite efficient at first - drinks and main course came quite quickly - but garlic bread was quite burnt so tasted bitter. I had the pasta Ragu which was a little cold on top but ok when stirred, just a little sweet for my tastes and actually not as nice as Tesco Finest ready meal version! Also had a large heel of cheese dropped on the top - obviously the end of the block from shavings and not attractive or edible. Hubby had the chorizo carbonara which was absolutely divine and highly recommended (serious order envy 🤣) We had some time to kill so thought we'd order dessert. Took ages for waiter to notice us sat with empty plates and ages for him to bring a dessert menu when asked. We eventually ordered our desserts but 25 minutes later when they still hadn't arrived we had to leave or we'd have been late for our show (We'd been in the restaurant for an hour and a half at this point and only had 1 course!) How long does it take to put a slice of cheesecake on a plate?! Went to desk to pay, as there was no chance of catching a servers attention, where the very helpful and apologetic staff member removed the desserts from our bill, but it made for quite a stressful end to our experience. The restaurant is desperately under staffed and the staff are not attentive - our waiter passed us numerous times and could see we still hadn't been served but made no effort to help (he only seemed to take orders and bring drinks) and the people on the table next to us had to request cutlery when their food arrived and repeatedly ask for their drinks which eventually turned up halfway through their meal! The person who takes your order is not the person who brings it and the food servers seem to be teenagers with absolutely no people skills who just plonk the plates down and run. Everyone is run off their feet and it all seemed a bit chaotic. Overall a bit of a disappointing and slightly stressful experience, and not cheap. Needs a lot more staff and more attention to customers. Maybe it was just a bad night but I'm not sure we'd return and would hesitate to recommend based on...

The food was lovely. My girls decided to take me out for father's day so we went around 1pm. The waiting staff were lovely, we got seated very quickly. Our starters came which the girls enjoyed. However as we were waiting for our Mains, my wife saw some bullying in the kitchen with the kitchen staff. She could tell there were a few new staff in the kitchen as he was unsure about few things. And she understands that sometime things can get frustrating especially when it gets busy. But the pizza chef was so angry that he just keep shout "one hour, one hour!" I turned around once or twice as i could hear it too. The other chef was upset as you could tell from his face as the pizza chef just keep going on. As this was going on he was getting angrier and making face behind the other chefs back also kept telling his colleagues about it too "it took him one hour, ONE HOUR!" You could see the anger in his face. The pizza chef then got the pizza tray tool (pizza scooper, unsure of the name) from the inside the pizza oven and poked the training staff with it. You could see he did it from a malicious place. Now this really ticked my wife over the edge!!!! As a customer my wife and myself felt so uncomfortable and upset. We dont condole bullying, my wife asked to speak to the restaurant manager, but was giving an assistant manager to speak to. Even though the general manager was in. After she explained what she saw and how it made her uncomfortable the "manager" said "they're just friend they always messing around". I'm sorry but WHAT! what kind of excuse is that! That was not friendly behaviour. That was BULLYING!!! The "Manager" did not even apologise or anything which just made me think that this is how they treat all their new staff. We will not be attending here again! To be honest this restaurant doesn't not care about their staff let alone their customers or how they're treated!! VERY VERY...

I usually love Zizzi… however, i doubt I’ll be returning. We made a reservation for 6pm, before a showing at the corn exchange at 7:30. We were sat, and then ignored for 20 minutes, before finally being spoken to. We had tried to order via the app, for an alleged ‘speedy order’, however, nothing is speedy about an order you can’t place. We then proceed to have to wait for another 15 minutes for drinks. One of us did not enjoy our drink, so ordered another. This one took 25 minutes to come, and only after it was chased up. In this time, 35 minutes after ordering, we received one of the two starters, without any mention of the other. It was another 10 minutes before we grabbed a waitresses attention, and she bought it over. Eventually, 1 hour 15mins after we had sat down, our mains were brought over. The food was delicious as usual, however, we were left with very minimal time to eat. Consequently, we had to abort the deserts we had ordered. While still eating, we asked for the bill to avoid missing our show. I had been very clear that we would not be paying the service charge, and that I had a discount to be applied to the bill. The waitress tried to still charge us for the deserts that we did not receive, and then claimed we could only apply the discount to one dish. Eventually, she sorted the bill, and the charge was a closer representation of the experience. I understand that’s sometimes restaurants can get busier than expected, and suffer from staffing issues. However, failing to apologise once for the poor service and delays, and attempting to charge us for dishes we didn’t have is unacceptable and completely changed my perception of...