Zizzi - Liverpool One — Restaurant in Liverpool

With a nice atmosphere and food, it's especially disappointing providing this a one star review. I've never done this before, for anything - this was just a very, very special experience.

The service ranking was far below any 1 star deserved. We were consistently ignored for hours at a time, whether it was for ordering the food in the first place, ordering dessert, or the worst case: The bill. We waited two hours for the bill alone. It was as if they didn't want payment - held hostage to them avoiding us while we sat in the middle of the restaurant, at our tables, trying to get their attention only to be ignored. With two staff members walking around, plenty of other people were delivered the bill during this time. They left. They moved on. They sat new people, who received their food.

We were having a nice time originally, and the food was quite nice, but on our busy day with a time limit for how long we had available, entering Zizzi's a little before 1PM on the 15th of November, 2023, then leaving well after 6PM had already passed, in the dark, on the way back, caused us to miss other designations for the day.

Suffice to say, this is the worst service experience we've ever had. Other times servers have been rude or dismissive or made mistakes - we've all been there, seen that -, but at least they delivered and processed orders and didn't ruin half your entire day. When we were finally acknowledged, after dozens of times of being walked past and ignored when we tried to ask, there was no apology for the delay, no compensation, not even an acknowledgement of it when we mentioned it - they just moved on.

If the food and atmosphere were the whole rating, this honestly was a nice experience - but we have lives, and we didn't go out to spend half our day at a restaurant being ignored by the staff when we tried to pay to leave. They weren't overbooked. There weren't too many people, with only a handful of other tables. We weren't rude, either; quite the opposite, at every given opportunity we were polite and amicable, and we weren't noisy or boisterous, with only two of us talking gently, softly, the entire time. There was no justification to this. We were not even properly checked into the table for the app, so we could not obtain it manually that way either. It quite frankly felt like targeted discrimination, else they seemed to think we were polite enough to ignore and push off until we snapped in patience, and ideally we'll never go there again. Our other commitments were thankfully able to be rescheduled. Dining here was a mistake. We came here on time for lunch, missed our plans and didn't have time for dinner. A cosy atmosphere and good food is not worth the disgusting level of service they delivered by refusing to provide us our food or the bill for unreasonable amounts of time. A valuable lesson learned on...

Of all the times we’ve eaten at Zizzi, this has definitely been one of the more disappointing experiences. First of all, the staff were very friendly and helpful. We were generally served promptly and didn’t have to wait long.

But then something happened that really made me raise my eyebrows. One of the waiters dropped a small pot of tomato sauce while clearing our table. No big deal – these things happen. Apart from the floor and a small part of the wall, nothing else got dirty. The waiter immediately informed his colleague behind the counter. She sprang into action right away and started mopping up the mess with some paper towels. “What great teamwork,” we thought at first. But then we noticed that she only wiped away the biggest spill and then very strategically placed the ‘Caution Wet Floor’ sign over the rest. The waiter who dropped the sauce came back shortly afterwards to finish cleaning up, or so we thought. Unfortunately, it was a half-hearted effort: quick and careless. The tomato stains were still stuck to the wall, and the ‘Caution Wet Floor’ sign was left there, awkwardly in the way.

That’s when we started to look a bit more critically, and other things stood out:

The counter was an absolute mess. There was a rubbish bag on top, staff drinking glasses, a few of their mobile phones, plates for setting tables…

Behind the counter, a cupboard was left open, crammed with cardboard packaging.

On the floor by the counter, there was first one and then two large empty boxes. All in all, very untidy.

And then the food: For starters, we had the cheese fondue – absolutely delicious. Truly brilliant! For the main course, we both had pizza, but it was extremely dry. Hardly any tomato sauce, and the cheese was overcooked…

And finally, the noise. At least half of it definitely came from the staff and their work: the kitchen was quite loud – not from the cooking (that’s part of the charm) – but from loading and unloading the dishwasher. On top of that, behind the counter, it seemed to be tradition to throw glass bottles into the glass bin with a crash. Really a shame – and...

My wife and I have just returned from an afternoon meal at Zizzi - Liverpool 1. We were not at all impressed with the service. When we arrived, we chose a table on the patio, and seated ourselves as no waiting staff were evident. We collected a menu from a nearby table, and decided what we wanted to order. 10 minutes went by, and no-one had arrived to ask if we would like to order, despite being passed several times by waiting staff en route to serving food to other tables close to us. After another 5 minutes, my wife finally managed to attract someone's attention by waving both hands in the air to a group of staff stood chatting just inside the restaurant doorway. Once we had the attention of the waiting staff, our meal and drinks were served quite promptly. However, no-one returned to the table after the initial visit to ask if we would like to order more drinks or any sweet. After our meal, our empty plates sat on the table for at least 20 minutes, again, despite our table being passed several times by staff members delivering food, and returning to the restaurant empty handed. Whilst we were eating our meal, a family of 8 arrived and made rather a lot of noise pulling tables together, and scraping chairs across the patio - making the kind of noise that sets your teeth on edge, like fingernails on a blackboard. Despite the racket, the waiting staff appeared not to acknowledge their presence. The family decided what they wanted to order, and sat and waited for service. After at least 20 minutes, the father went to ask if they could place an order. another 10 minutes went by and still no-one came to their table. Eventually, they got fed up with waiting and got up and left. This level of poor waiting service is remarkable. In all our years of eating out I can't recall anything that rivals what we experienced today. The place...