Franco Manca Victoria — Restaurant in London

We asked for a table for 2 adults (me and my wife) and our 1 year old baby (who is not yet eating real solid food). They provided us with a high chair and then we were also asked if we wanted the kid’s menu either. Like already happened in all the other restaurants we had been to, we kindly refused and instead we asked if it would have been possible to warm his prepared, sealed food from Hipp Organics. The waiter replied with a really poor polite tone that 1) they did not have a microwave (ok); 2) according to their policy, we weren’t allowed to have food coming from outside the restaurant, because it could affect someone of the tablemates with the risk of provoking an allergic reaction; 3) provided we couldn’t know that in advance, for that time we would have been allowed to give the food to our baby, next time not.

I honestly was really upset because in my opinion this policy could be applied to adults’ food or to kids who are old enough to eat the restaurant’s food. In addition, the contamination and allergy risk issue made no sense, because the same thing could happen if, for example, I was allergic to nuts and my wife decided to have nuts on her salad/pizza. How many times did it happen to all of us to share the table with somebody allergic to some food, and still have that food in front of him/her? Unless he/she is not going to touch or eat from my plate, there won’t be any danger.

Last but not least: by the way, we weren’t even asked at the beginning if we had any allergies!

Please change your policy, or apply it to adults and in a coherent way.

Regarding the food experience: Pizza was excellent and the location is...

Quality pizzas but APPALLING SERVICE - AVOID!

Three of us ordered pizzas which were delicious and fresh. Couldn't fault the food which is why we selected Franco Manca.

However, poor service lets this restaurant down. The waitress and bearded manager looked utterly miserable and uninterested in giving us any service. It took 40min to order with staff walking past us frequently whilst deliberately ignoring our request to order. Rather then say, "We'll be with you soon", we just got passive aggressive indifference. Whenever we needed service, we had to resort to physically running after the staff in order to get them to listen. We were literally waiting on and running around the staff, not the other way round.

When we wanted the bill, we tried to request this for another 30min. The only way to get some attention from the staff was to walk to the cash register so staff were forced to attend to us in case we did a runner...LOL! They seemed attentive then, ironically.

At no point were we asked if everything was OK and I now understand why. We dismissed the service charge that was added to our bill as some kind of joke from the staff. In fact, the service charge should have been less than zero - why are we forced to sit here waiting until you're ready to do your job?

Unless you don't mind non-existent service and passive aggressive staff, and have unlimited time to wait around for service, then avoid this place. It's such a shame though as the food is excellent and extremely cheap for...

A very mixed experience. I've been eating at FM since their first restaurant opened in Brixton Market - I'm a big fan of the food, but definitely won't be coming back to this branch.

Pros - great pizzas. Cons - the restaurant is in a really ugly and dull new corporate retail development (named after a controversial Conservative councillor - search "Sir Simon Milton") and there's no atmosphere...unless you enjoy eating in shopping malls, of course. Arriving at the restaurant, we were noticed but ignored by staff for about 10 minutes, even though we could see empty tables inside and outside. Once we were finally seated, the service was fine and we were served quickly and efficiently with excellent pizzas. The worst thing about this restaurant is the noise - it's really poorly designed in that respect and the place is full of loud, hard, sharp, clanging, echoey noises making conversation very difficult. Restaurants should have a lively buzz, but this place doesn't have that - just a racket. We couldn't wait to leave and it was a real relief to step outside...