Bella Italia - Telford — Restaurant in England

I think this was my first time trying Bella Italia, so was excited to see how this chain takes on Italian food.

I ordered the regular garlic bread as a side to my spaghetti carbonara main.

Some garlic bread slices were very tough to bite. I asked my server, Gregory, about this and he suggested that this is normal, that the bread would be softer if I had opted for the more expensive cheese option.

The spaghetti carbonara was... not good. First was the two pathetic strips of bacon that simply tasted "off". They weren't crispy - but a weird texture to bite into.

Next was what I had presumed were spring onions (but were actually leeks). These were unpleasantly tough to bite into, and the flavour just wasn't working with the rest of the dish. I've ordered carbonaras at a lot of Italian restaurants and I've never had leeks in any of them, probably because it doesn't work.

The spaghetti ribbons were fine but it's a shame the rest of the dish wasn't up to scratch.

In terms of staff and atmosphere, I could hear a lot of shouting from the kitchen area which was a bit disruptive. When I was finished, I requested the bill from a staff member who was cleaning cutlery. They said they'd bring it, but never did. In fact, I had to wait close to 10 minutes to request the bill again from my original waiter.

It's a shame, but based on my experience I can't recommend Bella Italia. There are other places to dine in Southwater Square, so it's worth checking those...

Decided to give Telford Bella Italia another chance on Wednesday afternoon as the last time (around 4 weeks ago) the pizza was average and kids were told they had run out of certain deserts.

Honestly, this time the experience was even worse… order taken at 4.30pm (our waitress then went off home as she grabbed her bag and said goodbye to other staff) and 45 mins later still no food but the couple next to us who had arrived around 25 minutes after us were already tucking into their food !

We asked another waitress, she advised it would be a few more minutes. Seemed as if our initial waitress went home and had forgotten to pass on our order to the chef?

So nearer 5.30pm now when food arrives and low and behold the pizza comes, on an over cooked base which was extremely difficult to cut through , Pepperoni and chicken topping were rock hard and kids just didn’t want to eat it!

Finally get to desert brought to us by the manager… and the fruit option had no strawberries just banana just as our previous visit…. There are supermarkets near the restaurant so I’m not sure how you can run out of fruit or basic deserts?

Overall Food was extremely poorly made ….Cutlery was dirty and seats did not seem like they were wiped down.

Just an overall unpleasant experience and really time to look for a new family favourite for pizza...

Good service to begin, we were seated nice and quick, first waitress was a pleasure to deal with, polite and courteous, food was good.

Experience let down by the fact we got forgot about for 20-30 minutes with used plates and cutlery on the table, we was going to have a desert but due to the time taken to clear our table and actually get more service we decided against. We asked for the Bill. I just paid this without question, upon review we noticed that we had been charged £8.95 for our child’s meal even though this meal was stated as a promotional £1, upon questioning we were advised we should have produced a code, I re-read the promotional jargon on the website and at no point does it elude to needing a code. The way in which it’s worded suggests that this is something of a standard practice within the promotional times. Very poor practice, the waitress who dealt with our complaint was abrupt and dismissive.

For the sake of £7 you have lost repeat visits from us in the future, £7 also cost you this review, must do better! We will head to Zizzi right opposite in future as never had an issue...