PizzaExpress — Restaurant in England

Attended here last night, for the first time, I felt really dissociated, I worked for PE in shad Thames and winchmore Hill some years ago and the level of service that I know if was completely missing. 1st we were made to wait to be seated, having once been seated a further 35 minutes before we was even asked for our drinks, the 2 woman whom served us were both so rude, I couldn't work out why, the woman I was with made the remark they clearly don't like a white man and a black woman together, maybe it was that, however there was absolutely no need to be as rude and as nonchalant as they were. The food was amazing, it always is at PE so a thank you to the chefs I know those guys work hard as I'm sure you all do. The restaurant is beautiful, well decorated, modern, vibrant, sadly when we asked if the romana pizza could be cut in half and put in a box the waitress, rolled her eyes, huffed then took it away for a further 5 minutes, only left on the plate and thrown back on the table. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, we was the last ones to leave, the noise you guys made, effectively made us leave, the banging and clanging of the plates was unreasonable, that never happened in my day, I felt like we was being forced out the restaurant, I felt really bad not leaving a tip, it's the first time I've ever done that in a PE, sadly I was shocked at the level of service, the staff we had wasn't friendly, they wasn't polite, I felt almost like we were just left and forgotten about. Sadly I wouldn't recommend this PE to anyone, I've visited over 120 chains, despite being well decored the business is run, contrary to all that I know how the company atleast once run, the standards I'm talking about wouldn't have changed either, they would have become.even tighter so this experience is strange.

You Made us feel extremely unwelcome and that I...

Food and drinks were all ordered and arrived in no time at all. Our waitress was a pleasant, timid young lady who at times could not be heard over the noise from teenagers at our table who were in good spirits celebrating a birthday. There must have been a change in shifts because for a time our waitress was the only one serving and taking orders. New staff came on shift but they were doing other tasks such as dealing with online orders to be delivered and clearing tables. However, the female manager really needs a refresher course on her customer service skills and learn how to talk to staff. Her whole demeanour was off putting and she had a continuous frown on her face. Although she did not raise her voice we could hear how she spoke to our waitres. We were also within earshot when she was complaining that our table had not paid and left. This was despite our table asking for the bill 10 minutes before. No complaints at all about the food, drinks or our waitress (I apologise but we did not get her name) but the manger needs to work on her management and customer skills. She finally must have realised the staff were busy because she changed into 'work wear' before we left and...

Despite a lengthy conversation with the manager on arrival regarding use of tesco vouchers and multiple family groups within large group to celebrate son's birthday...bill payment conflict RUINED our time. Nothing done to help me as a customer manage the situation before it became a problem, despite my request to order and pay separately from the beginning. The server worked really hard on her own. The manager had not communicated to the server that some of us were using tesco vouchers towards our portion of the bill, we were encouraged to use the Pizza Express app, some members of our group (without tesco vouchers) claimed the free dough balls and drink. Therein lay the problem, we were told we couldn't use our vouchers as well! I do understand this, however, had the manager helped me by allocating table numbers to each group, then separate order/bill...THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED. COME ON PIZZA EXPRESS SORT IT OUT OR DON'T PARTNER WITH TESCO CLUBCARD! Afterall, we're all trying to get by in this cost of living crisis, and using our vouchers meant we could take our son out & see his family on...