Zizzi - Beckenham — Restaurant in London

Food was amazing! Good size portions and reasonably priced! Would have been an awesome experience all round however - we found our waitress was in no way warm or courteous towards us. Now, we're not looking for a full blown conversation or, for all of her attention to be on us, but witnessing her demeanour change from friendly to other guest and then rather cold to us, left us feeling like we had done something or said something wrong. We were never asked if everything was okay; we were never asked if we wanted any more drinks; we had to ask for if we could order dessert and be given a menu, despite our son being on the set course kids meal. The desserts came whilst my wife had taken my son to the toilet - which is of course fine, however I do take issue with the way the waitress put the Ice cream for my son on the table and left abruptly, without even a look, or waiting to hear if I had any other requests, or even just for me to say thank you. At the end of the meal we had not asked for the bill but, the waitress came over with the payment terminal and asked for our vouchers. We were never told how much the meal was or given a paper copy of the bill. We were also never given the chococino that should have been part of the set kids meal. When paying, the waitress took the terminal away twice too quickly which resulted in failed payments. When she did finally leave the terminal in position long enough for the payment to go through, she again left abruptly not waiting for us to say thank or even say goodbye. We didn't even get a final receipt nor were we asked if we wanted one. As I said, food was amazing! Great vegan and non vegan options. The rainbow lasagne was incredible! But, it is sad to say that the whole experience was marred by the service of this waitress, whom we feel seemed to take issue with us, although I hope that this is not the case. Other staff members appear to be friendly towards us, so it really left us baffled. Such a shame as we usually go to another restaurant down the road from here and fancied a change. Unfortunately we won't be coming back...

I went here for an early evening meal on Saturday. The restaurant looks very appealing and was very, very busy giving the initial appearance of being good. The waiting staff were attentive and looked very professional . We had booked and only waited a couple of minutes to be shown to our table. My issue was with the food, I had Bruschetta starter, this consisted of small uncooked yellow tomatoes, raw red onion, quite tasteless, on top of a crust and a slice of warm hard ciabatta bread with some pesto sauce wiped on the plate. I was hungry and even though this was not exactly what I was expecting I smothered it in Olive Oil and Balsamic and ate it. The Main course was Pollo Prosciutto, this was the one that got me!!! This was some sort of reconstructed Chicken breast patty made into a shape, tasteless and a sort of plasticky consistency with some sort of thin equally plastic type of ham over the top, no taste. The new potatoes tasted as if they had been boiled, left for ages somewhere and then put into an oven to warm them up and brown the skins a little and then cut in half, the green beans were cooked very well but unfortunately tasteless. The White wine sauce Ha! This tasted liked some sort of powdered Chicken stock that had been thickened up a little. It was quite honestly one of the worst meals I have ever had I could not eat it, it made me feel quite sick. I did mention this to the waiter and in all fairness he tried his best to rectify the situation by offering free dessert, I do not eat desserts, and even if I did, I don't think I would have been able to keep it down after sampling the main meal. I would not use this restaurant again, but as I have said there were a lot of people in there. So if you fancy a restaurant with tasteless food, where small children are allowed to run riot around your table whilst their parents sit at the as far away from them as possible, quaffing wine, this is definately the...

Lovely waitress; hard-working and charming. Maitre D' lovely but a little dishevelled-looking. Interesting Bowie-fan decor, decent toilets (crucial in a restaurant), lots of light but also hence noisy acoustics because of lots of glass and shiny surfaces. It's the modern way and hygienic and easy-clean.

The food though - the most important aspect of any restaurant - was underwhelming for me. Our group of about 20 ordered from the Valentine's Day £27.95 special menu. Some dishes served up looked fine, others full of stodgy dough or just too small and uninspiring. I asked whether or not to have the squid starter or the arancini. Told the squid was good if I liked fish, I ordered it. It was a few small thin pieces and pretty tasteless - I should have known it would be frozen.

For main I had a calzone, again asking which of the two on offer the waitress recommended. Again I took the suggestion. It was the narrowest calzone I'd ever seen, like a dough hanky with a few marbles in, and the filling was red and meaty. Years ago Pizza Express sold a calzone; ham, artichoke, mozzarella in bechamel sauce, and the size of two big hands; hot and fresh and creamy. Maybe Zizzi's serve reduced portion sizes if you order the set lunch (I saw this in a Turkish restaurant in East Croydon recently); hopefully not. If they do I wish they'd say so.

Most of the others with whom I dined seemed to enjoy their food and the interesting drinks on offer and only I complained about the calzone size. The waitress offered to swap it for something else from the menu but I declined as I didn't want them to bin food. I think we spent a little over £50 a head because we had a few drinks while hanging...