The Old Fire Station — Restaurant in England

The location is nice and charming. It is an old fire station with some cool memorabilia displayed on the walls.

The table service was good, the host and staff were very welcoming, absolutely kind and always smiling. However, I have to say... I would have liked so much to love the food, but unfortunately I didn't.

The quality of the ingredients used was good and all looked fresh and healthy... but as an Italian and pizza estimator, and since pizza is the main dish served in this place I have to say there were some issues:

Inconsistent cooking time (pizza dough was from slightly overcooked to very overcooked. (In one of the pizzas we ordered the middle was actually crunchy like a bisquit... a big no)

-too little mozzarella that actually disappeared almost totally from the most overcooked one of the three pizzas we ordered

the size of the pizza was too small for the price you pay. 12£ for a small margherita is too much. It was worth 8£ sizewise, but only because we are in England. In Italy you would have paid 5-6 euros a margherita of the same size.

Conclusion: Worth trying if you are in the area! Good drinks, ok food. But I personally won't come back soon. ‐----------------------‐---------- EDIT: response to the owner's response.

Sorry, I don't like your reply. Let me explain you why:

First of all let me remind you I actually praised your restaurant and staff and gave you 3 stars instead of the 2 your pizza deserved. The"irony"in your reponse sounds very unprofessional. The review is based on my experience, I am not judging all pizzas you could ever have made in your restaurant.

1-nobody mentioned us that you had problems with the dough the night we were dining in your restaurant. If you read carefully, my complaint was not about the dough by the way, but about the wrong cooking time on our three pizzas.

2- You brought a very dry pizza to our table. If you recognise you have issues with your product you don't bring it to your customer's table without mentioning it. Or are you waiting for the customer to complain?

3- I was very kind to you not complaining abut the pizzas and not asking for a discount. We were actually too hungry to complain, and you should be happy we didn't. But you are right, I had to ask to take them all back.

4- Our pizzerias in Italy pay taxes and fresh local produce exactly like you do in England. So I don't really see the point of this funny (or a bit rude?) comment.

5- My point is based on comparing quality and size of your pizza with other pizzas I have eaten in England during six years. So I can definitely argue that your margherita pizzas are overpriced, they should be worth 8£. If you want them to be paid 12£, you should at least make them a bit bigger. I'm happy for you if your customers are willing to pay that much. However, I encourage you to go out and try to eat some good pizzas that can be found in your own country to understand what's on the market. (Not talking about franchisings obviously)

I don't expect you to learn something from my review, it's totally up to you. In any case I wish you all the best to your staff...

Customer service is clearly not a priority! Ate here with my friend and her baby this evening. Great setting but it was pretty cold inside. Ordered olives and hummus/bread sticks for starters and two pizzas. The pizzas were decent enough, the olives were not great, they were essentially cheap supermarket black olives. Service was good until we asked for our leftovers to be boxed up to take away, and the waitress came back to tell me they'd dropped my pizza on the floor, I'd only eaten half of it. They offered me a 10% discount off just my pizza which I said wasn't really proportional to the amount lost. A different waitress came back to say they were only 'allowed' to give me 20% off just my pizza. So I got £2.80 off for losing almost half of my pizza. I did argue this again when I went to pay but there was no budging and little remorse. They just didn't really seem to care. (I also don't understand how they did manage to save two tiny pieces of pizza for me when the whole plate was smashed on the floor? Makes me wonder if they just ate the rest of my pizza and lied about dropping it on the floor, also never heard a plate smash in the open kitchen, a mystery!) I think a manager is necessary on the shop floor rather than just the junior members of staff especially for a busy Friday...

The restaurant is attractive, spacious and has a nice feel to it, and the staff are welcoming and accommodating. We were a large group (18 people) and were told that the pizzas could take a while (which a sign in the restaurant reiterated - the pizza oven can only accommodate two pizzas at a time). Still, it was probably over an hour between the first and last pizzas arriving so we weren't able to eat together (if the oven can only make two pizzas I wonder if this is also a problem for orders of 3 or 4?). The standard pizzas looked and tasted delicious. They have gluten-free and vegan pizzas (which is great) but the gluten-free bases are terrible. Like really bad. Which is frustrating because they buy them in ready-made (which is fair enough - not everyone wants to make their own gluten-free dough); if you're going to do that, at least buy a nice one. They do exist! Despite being smaller and less tasty, the gluten-free pizzas cost £1 more than standard ones (I expected something a bit better for £15). All in all, I really wanted to like The Old Fire Station but couldn't recommend it for large groups or its...