Zizzi - Aylesbury — Restaurant in England

We booked to go here for my husband's birthday - a family of four dining at half eight on a Monday evening. On arrival we were initially met by the person who seemed to be in charge that night but she couldn't bring herself to smile, greet us verbally or suggest any sense of welcome. Instead she just told us to wait for a moment - no please or thank you. This poor start did not bode well especially as the restaurant wasn't that busy at this time of the day. Another member of staff came over and asked if we just wanted a table for four - we explained we'd booked and he seemed most surprised and he and the manageress were looking at the restaurant as if they didn't know where they could possibly seat us - despite there being plenty of vacant tables. This lack of welcome and initial contact kind of made us feel like we were a bit of an inconvenience to their evening. A warm friendly welcome sets the tone for the experience when eating out but sadly at this branch of Zizzi warmth and friendliness was non existent.

Our orders were taken in good time and our drinks and starters arrived fairly promptly. The cheesy garlic bread arrived covered in red onion chutney (is that Italian? ) which my children hadn't seen comes as standard and if you don't want you have to request just plain cheese. Our error but we felt the chutney was quite an unusual addition. I ordered the garlic prawn skewer which was delicious and well cooked but I added what I believe were called "Little Cloud Breads" to accompany this dish. The name suggested to me something light and fluffy but the reality was 3 lumps of bread so hard you could throw them and do damage! One was inedible - I couldn't break it open with my fingers let alone chew it.

Once our plates were cleared, we waited for ages for our mains. As I said earlier the restaurant was not at all busy by this point. We watched as our waiter left the restaurant for the night and it was only when my husband visibly started looking about to see if there was someone to ask about our food that we saw the manageress go over to the kitchen servery presumably to check on our food. When she passed near enough to our table my husband enquired about our mains and she just said they'd be with us soon. No apology. No smile.

My sons both had pizzas which they enjoyed and my husband had a calzone which was lovely. I ordered a spicy chicken pasta dish which was absolutely drowning in oil. It tasted ok but sadly was overpowered by the oiliness. If we hadn't waited so long to get our mains I would have sent it back. I was asked if I'd like cheese with my dish and when I declined the woman made a disgruntled noise as if my choice to eat my pasta without cheese was in some way offensive or wrong!

We elected not to stay for dessert and will certainly not be rushing to return to this Zizzi. We'd rather spend our time and money somewhere that gives a warm, genuine welcome and looks after it's guests with decent service and better food.

Thankfully Aylesbury has lots of better options for...

I’d like to echo other recent negative reviews, when I say that our meal here was a complete disaster. This place has gone massively downhill. Firstly, when we arrived it took ages for us to be seated. Despite having a restaurant that wasn’t packed, they very nearly turned us away until I mentioned we had a booking. It took quite a while to get any service.

When it did arrive, we ordered from the set menu. The bruschetta was nice. However, the pizzas took absolutely ages to arrive. When they did, the jackfruit vegan pizza arrived with hardly any toppings and they weren’t evenly spread across the pizza. Nobody bothered to ask us how the meal was, and it took ages to flag someone down to get chilli oil and black pepper. The pizzas were also lukewarm.

Once we were done, it took forever again for someone to take the plates away. I saw several staff walk past, look at the table and then walk off.

Once the plates were eventually removed, we had to ask twice for the dessert menu. I asked for the vegan option, and this wasn’t available. They then said that the vegan cheesecake was available, and gave us the cutlery. However, they then came over and told us that this wasn’t available after all, and offered sorbet. This was after we’d gone through all of the effort of ordering through the set menu. I realised afterwards that they almost accidentally gave me the none-vegan cheesecake, which isn’t great because I’m allergic to milk.

In the meantime, my partners dessert arrived separately to mine. This was the brownie met tiramisu, which was basically a cold brownie with sponge on top. It did not look nice.

We then asked for the bill. However, this was delayed because another table had the misfortune of being served a calzone which was ice cold in the middle.

All throughout the stay, we could hear the kitchen desperately ringing the bell to try and get the staff to collect customers orders.

Zizzi has also recently changed its menu. They’ve removed a lot of the nice stuff, like millionaires shortbread and replaced it with poor alternatives, in a desperate attempt to keep prices low. However, the new menu isn’t great.

I left the place still feeling hungry - despite having a three course meal. I’ve never had that after being in a restaurant before, and just shows how poor their portion sizes are. It completely defeats the objective of going to a restaurant.

I noticed the place was much quieter than last year too. I think perhaps others have realised this isn’t a great place anymore. This is a real shame, as Zizzi’s has historically been great and it makes me sad to see it...

I am a delivery driver I went to pick up the order from this restaurant it said to collect at 17:57pm I arrived at 18:02pm when I went into the restaurant I went to ask one of the staff for my order the lady replied it will be 10 minutes bear in mind I did have another order to collect from another place, I returned after 10 minutes the lady that said it’ll be 10 minutes the first time walked off after she saw me, I had then asked another lady how long it will be she shrugged her shoulders I think she had 0 braincells I genuinely think she was mentally challenged because if I was a worker I’d ask the kitchen staff how long it’ll be it’s not rocket science. I asked for them to cancel the order they said to call the customer which was stupid as I had been already waiting there for 30minutes. The third time came another excuse came with that. On the 4th time I had went in I waited a 5minutes then some nobhead came over and gave me the order, he handed it to me as if I was a dog, I didn’t want to cause a scene just before leaving there was another delivery driver I told him to cancel as he’d be waiting an hour they were giving him the same treatment that I received so he walked off aswell. I did understand that it was busy but it isn’t that hard to communicate with the delivery driver to say that we’re currently working on the orders for the customers in store as we’re busy. I went to the second restaurant and they had complained to me as the food they prepared was waiting for one hour, I was using just eat so you can’t go from the first order to the second without collecting the first one first. I will never collect an order from this restaurant again, the staff think they own the world when they’re just stuck in a 9 to 5 for the rest of their...