Zizzi - St Katharine's Docks — Restaurant in London

Worst service experience ever – complete disaster!

We waited a very long time at the entrance for someone to assign us a table.

Once we got seated, no one came over for ages! We asked a runner if we could place an order – he said he’d call someone but just kept wandering around and did nothing.

When we finally managed to order, our starters sat on the pass forever. The waitress brought only 3 out of 4 dishes. My prawns on skewers were left behind for another 15 minutes! The runner wasn’t delivering drinks, food, or clearing tables – what was his purpose? He looked lost and completely unproductive.

When we got the prawns, it was only thanks to the manager, who we flagged down. But they were already cold when served! She returned them to the kitchen and rushed the staff to redo the dish. Unfortunately, due to the rush, I got 2 raw prawns out of 5. I genuinely feel sorry for the kitchen team, working double under such poor floor management.

No one cleared our table before mains arrived. We had to stack our plates and move them ourselves to make space! The waitress finally removed them after dropping the new dishes.

We asked for salt and pepper – never received them.

No one checked on us during the meal, we were completely ignored. And the restaurant wasn’t even busy – just a few tables outside and maybe three inside. Staff included three servers, a manager, a runner, and a bartender.

Again, no one cleared our main course plates. We had to request desserts ourselves.

We ordered ice cream – it was half melted when served because the servers couldn’t be bothered. They preferred chatting by the bar.

Ice cream combinations were wrong. One was supposed to be lemon-vanilla, but we got strawberry-vanilla. The waitress acted like we were wrong, but the order clearly said lemon. Eventually, she replaced it. The other order should have been pannacotta-lemon, but came pannacotta-vanilla – we didn’t bother to complain again.

We waited over 30 minutes for the bill! A girl named "Basia" (someone called her from the bar) was walking around with our check, then randomly went upstairs. Eventually, we asked the manager who processed the payment. When we told "Basia" we had already paid, she just waved her hand in frustration and walked away.

To summarize: The service was an utter disaster. The kitchen staff worked fast and the food (despite the minor dessert errors) was really tasty. But the delays and lack of communication from the front of house ruined everything. No clue who’s in charge of cleanliness either – the disabled toilet and baby changing area downstairs were filthy. I wanted to feed my baby but couldn’t – had to do it at the table. The stench and dirt were disgusting. Fire extinguishers near the bathroom were covered in dust – you could write a complaint in it!

It’s a shame – the kitchen deserves praise, but the service is unacceptable. Someone higher up should seriously look into this location – other branches are much better. I usually enjoy this chain and often visit with family, but I absolutely do not...

I wish i could give 0 star to very poor and rude customer service, they definitely need some training. From the beginning when the waitress was showing the table was very rude, we kindly asked to change the table as we had a baby and wanted to sit somewhere not sunny, she just been so difficult when there were lots of free spaces and we changed the table but staff wasn't happy, they started talking each other (we were not bothering anyone or close to other people) , we just couldn't get what was the problem. And then we were going to order something, another guy came with an attitude again and rudely asked for the orders to make us to feel even more uncomfortable because we called them to order something and no one was coming around to take the orders because we changed the table he almost told us off saying that they had to update the system or something as we moved. If we didn't have the baby we definitely wouldn't stay there. But we never ever go back to that place. It's shame that they have such a good view and that place supposed to be Italian but the people working there are so racist, they were treating people differently, he even asked us where were we from, as we are foreigners we completely got different customer service, the staff kept giggling and looking at us, but they were completely treating different to other tables. When they brought the plates, drinks etc. They just left them in the middle like we helped ourselves, because they were not paying attention, they missed one of our orders. Don't waste your money there especially if you aren't from the UK, as they pick and choose customers and treat every one differently. Absolutely rubbish staff with no manners and education with full of attitude problems. don't recommend it at all. There's also some other nice places to sit down...

Visited with my daughter yesterday at 3pm. It was very quiet (about 5 tables). We were greeted promptly, showed to table and told to enjoy our stay. Waiter who took the order was nice and brought a pen for my daughter as they'd run out of crayons he said. I asked if I could swap mushrooms on my pizza with caramelised onions and saw him typing the request on a device. My pizza arrived neither with mushrooms nor with onions. We managed to eat half of our pizzas and the drinks (bottle of gran reserva and orange juice) still didn't arrive. Caramelised onions were brought when I, literally, had a quarter of a pizza left. Check back on food was not done. Staff members were chatting while bartender (Vitalina) was setting up tables (2 tables in restaurant left by that time). After we finished, we waited for 9 minutes for our table to be cleared and another 9 minutes for the bill to arrive. I asked for the service charge to be removed. I used to work on restaurants and always left cash tips but this was the first time I decided not to do so. On our way out the host was chatting with another staff member and moved a step back to let us go through but didn't say anything - only the female bartender bade us farewell from the bar. That's very disappointing and I definitely won't be visiting again any Zizzi, especially after our visit 3 weeks prior in Reading Riverside when, although it was a quiet afternoon and 4 staff members on the floor (all pretending not to see us) we waited by the door for over a minute and were not even acknowledged - even other customers were looking at us wondering why no one was greeting us. I believed that it was just an isolated incident of staff lacking proper training and wanted to give it a try elsewhere but it proved to the contrary. Photo taken in Oracle shopping...