La Bella Chime — Restaurant in England

My wife and I went to la Bella chime for valentines night 2025.

We arrived and greeted extremely well first impressions count! We had the option to dine upstairs or down stairs we chose upstairs.

Arrived upstairs and then given the option on where we would like to sit bit of an odd option but we decided to sit within the atmosphere comfy bench seating beside other diners and a single seat for myself!

Given two menus and the valentines special menu!

We opted to go for the valentines menu £80 per couple with 2 glasses of Prosecco but we could only have the Prosecco if we where having the same main meal which I found extremely bizarre nothing written on the menu to say that’s the option only given a verbal notice on this!

My wife does not eat pork as the starter was a sharing platter with cured meats (ham) so we opted for a stater from the main menu.

Asked if we would like drinks obviously the Prosecco and I had a soft drink and my wife a wine.

One of the servers took our order for drinks then five minutes later another server asked us for drinks order (communication obviously lacking I understand valentines can be busy but own your stations)

We opted for the fillet steak for main one medium one medium rare.

Starters arrived with steak knifes!

We had our starters extremely nice.

Now I have worked in catering previously and like to make things easier for servers so I always stack the plates and cutlery when food is finished to make it easier for the server to take plates away!

Steaks arrived only had a steak knife on the table the sever seemed confused that all we had was a steak knife event though she cleared the plates and cutlery this also happened to the table next to us are they expecting diners to use the same cutlery for starters and mains?

Cut into my steak and it wasn’t medium rare it was rare only just past blue steak temperature this does not bother me at all I still eat it my wife’s steak was only just past rare!

The steak was served with langoustines yum.

Obviously you eat these with your fingers there was no dish with lemon water to clean fingers with so had to go to the toilet to wash my hands to finish my meal ( rookie mistake)

We had dessert not to bad dessert is dessert to me when it’s a special menu!

We had used our serviettes for starters and mains so we needed one for dessert I had to go to the desk and ask for a couple asked the server for a serviette she looked at me as if I was talking Hebrew I repeated myself again only to say napkin to the exclamation of ahhhhhh!! serviette c’mon guys!!

£104 spent not a bad evening but staff could do better and chef needs to learn the well done medium rare steak technique...

I was really looking forward to trying this 'restaurant' as I had driven past many times and wanted to give it a try. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I chose the Calamari as a starter, as I was told it was fresh. It wasn't it was frozen, chewy and tasteless. Then after a long wait for the main course, which was the pie of the day/ week and it was described as a hand made pie containing tender pieces of lamb with mint in flaky pastry. It didn't live up to its description, the stringy bits of lamb in the undercooked pastry covering was tasteless, with no trace of mint. The pastry wasn't cooked, it was just dough. Unfortunately it didn't end there! The seasonal root vegetables appeared dehydrated, cooked to death and tasteless. I ate what was cooked and left the majority of the meal. When the waitress collected our plates. I explained that I was happy with what I had and she seemed to think I was joking! I asked her to take my plate to the 'chef' and to ask him if he would be prepared to pay for such an dreadful meal? Then nothing, we sat at our table for 10 minutes or more, no one approached us. So we went downstairs abd asked for the bill. My meal cost had been removed but what was annoying was no forn if apology was forthcoming. Then to add insult to injury they had over charged me £2.50 for a bottle of soda water, that I didn't have. One thing for sure is that we won't be visiting again, there are plenty of other restaurants offering better food and service, give this place a wide birth they don't deserve...

We have used Chime on many occasions due to this being our local takeaway but unfortunately we had our first bad experience this evening.

We ordered a Texan Pizza, crispy chilli beef noodles and a side order of salt and pepper fries.

Our order was ready for collection at 19:15hrs which was collected on time. After a short 3/4 minute journey home we sat down to enjoy our evening meal to find the pizza was stone cold, and the chips and crispy chilli beef just about lukewarm which was extremely disappointing having spent nearly £30 with Chime.

Being a couple who very rarely complain we felt as though we had no other option but to contact chime and inform them of our findings.

We spoke to Sarah and explained to her about our food she informed us she was going to speak to the chef, we were then told our food was cooked fresh for collection at 19:15hrs and she found it hard to believe it was cold by the time we got it home.

As the conversation progressed Sarah eventually offered to give us a refund or cook our meals fresh shortly followed by her saying she assumes we wouldn’t want to use them again. After this comment and no apology we decided to get a refund, this left us extremely inconvenienced as we have a newborn baby and our online shopping wasn’t due until the following day leaving us without an evening meal.

We won’t be using Chime again and we certainly won’t be giving them any business once the restaurant reopens after our experience...