Zizzi - Coventry — Restaurant in Coventry

Due to work, I travel a lot across the UK, and while on the roads, I often eat in Zizzi. I went for dinner on the 31st of January 2024 around 6-7 pm while working in Coventry. I ordered winter caprese, lentil ragu and ice cream, and a great waitress served it. Around 4 am, I woke up, got diarrhoea and started vomiting from the food I had eaten the night before in Zizzi restaurant. I was weak and exhausted all day, and on my way back home, I went to Zizzi Coventry and told them that I had food poisoning. A young woman who introduced herself as a manager disappeared after I shared what happened to me. Then, a rude waitress said that it was impossible to get food poisoning symptoms that early since I ate at 7 pm and started having symptoms at 4 am the following day. She also said that if I had food poisoning, that could be only from the food I ate at home earlier. Her comment and ignorance concerns how little she knows about hygiene and food health and safety. Furthermore, a guy who introduced himself as a chef came and repeated the same story that it was impossible to get food poisoning from the food I ate and the time I got symptoms. He added that I might have a lactose intolerance rather than food poisoning- like I don’t know my own body. The lack of knowledge from the chef concerns me more. I am also appalled by their absence of customer service and common humanity to ask someone if they were ok since they told you they were unwell. I told chef that I often eat in Zizzi while on work travel, I left contact details, and the chef said he would investigate and let me know. I never asked for money back. I came to let them know what happened to me so they could avoid food poisoning someone else. The manager never returned to talk to me. Since the 1st of February 2024, I haven’t heard from Zizzi. It is beyond belief how lightly they take customers' comments on the food they serve. I recovered a couple of days after this, and I left this review to warn others about what can...

📍Zizzi 🇮🇹🍝

Garlic Bread with Mozzarella (£6.15) - Garlic Bread with Mozzarella & caramelised balsamic onions. Calzone Pollo Spinaci (£12.95) - Roasted chicken, speck, spinach & mushrooms, in a creamy mozzarella & Bechamel sauce, topped with coppa ham. King Prawn Linguine (£12.25) - King prawns & courgette ribbons in a hot roquito chilli, tomato & white wine sauce. Golden Millionaire's Slice (£5.85) - A chocolate chip cookie base, topped with layers of salted toffee & coconut chocolate ganache. Finished with splashes of gold. Pasta Crisps (on the house)

Verdict: For starters, we had the pasta crisps and garlic bread with mozzarella. I was absolutely awestruck the minute I took my first bite of the garlic bread 😍😍😍 It was a festival of flavours - Ooey gooey cheese melted meticulously on soft garlic bread, perfectly matched with flavourful caramelised balsamic onions. The perfectly-congealed cheese strands that stretched seductively from every slice of the bread left me speechless!! 🧀 It was by far the cheesiest garlic bread I’ve had; in fact it tasted more like a mini cheese pizza 🧄🍕The mains were also satisfactory, especially the calzone which was hand baked in their special oven. It was jumbo sized and loaded with various fillings 😱 It was all very overwhelming, but as you can tell how good the food was, we finished everything with a pleasurable experience. If I had to criticise an item off their menu, it would be the Golden Millionaire's Slice. The layers were indistinguishable and tasted very much alike - it felt like I was scooping a blob of chocolate batter; it was too sticky and chocolatey, lacking the different textural chemistry.

I have to say that Zizzi is the perfect spot for Rustica seekers as their authentic Italian food will serenade your taste buds with its heavenly taste. The secret to Italian cooking is sapori e saperi (flavors and skills), which implies doing little to excellent fresh ingredients, and I have to admit that Zizzi...

Disappointing. We'd had a take away from there during the lockdown. The food was nice enough but we thought it hadn't travelled well. Well, the food in the restaurant wasn't much better.

Atmosphere. It was very noisy, mostly down to the acoustics and it being very busy. Combined with the interior decorating, which looks like they didn't bother to replace the ceiling after it was converted from a retail outlet, it wasn't conducive to conviviality. And our table was wobbly.

Service The service was friendly enough but I thought we were a bit rushed through. Starters arrived very soon after we had ordered and we'd only just finished those before mains arrived. Plates started to be cleared before we'd all finished eating.

Food I got the impression that everything had been taken out of the freezer and microwaved. My wife and I had the mushroom starter, which turned out not to be whole mushrooms but a thin layer of paste on toast with a slice of mozzarella melted on top. One of my son's had king prawns on a skewer in tomato sauce and they were excellent and my other son had the spicy garlic bread which he said was good. Two of us had the crab and ricotta cannelloni but there was so much melted cheese on top you could barely taste the crab and the cannelloni tubes had started to dry out as well. My wife had spaghetti carbonara and that was very good, and my son enjoyed his vegetarian pizza.

We probably won't be eating there again because there are so many good independent restaurants in our neighborhood but sadly no...