Zizzi - Manchester Corn Exchange — Restaurant in Manchester

Nice food, but not a good experience overall. The member of staff who welcomed us rolled his eyes when I asked for a gluten free menu (due to having coeliac disease). Although I had explained that I needed the gluten free food for a medical reason, this felt very much like my requirements were being dismissed and mocked, which was a bad start to the meal!

We then had to wait 15 minutes for someone to take our drinks order, and it then took quite a while for the drinks to arrive too. Starters arrived promptly and were tasty, but then it took a long time for the main meals to arrive. When they did, they were only warm, and my friend found a hair in her food too. In fairness, the waitress (who was a different person to who welcomed us) did take a lot of care to talk through the gluten free options, but I had a bad taste in my mouth from being, essentially, laughed at earlier.

During the time we were there, one other table left as their order hadn’t been taken about 20 minutes after arriving, and another table was complaining about the wait times too. Once we had asked for the bill, we waited for another 15 minutes or so, then gave up to go and find someone to pay!

Nice food, but only go if a) you have a lot of time and b) don’t have any dietary requirements! Also quite an expensive meal, especially one where I felt let down...

What to say about this restaurant .... First and last time I've eaten here, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The worst thing of all was the service...extremely slow, the restaurant was half full. When we arrived at the restaurant it was 7:50, it took them a long time to get us in, almost all the tables were empty and not picked up. 20 minutes to bring tap water to our table from the time we ordered it. 45 minutes to bring the starters, some frozen calamari and some calamari, 45 minutes really? 30 minutes more to bring us some pizzas that take 1 minute to cook in the oven they have. Very very slow, no one seemed to be in a hurry. We finished our pizzas and we were waiting for a while to see if we could order desserts, the manager started to clear the tables around us which were never cleaned and she didn't even take our plates off the table, they left us there abandoned until we got up and we had to go somewhere else to eat our desserts. We were there for 2 hours and 15 minutes to eat a frozen starter and a pizza, I can't believe it. The food I would rate as a 5, I have eaten in authentic Italian restaurants and it has nothing to do, there is not much to expect from these chain...

I really don’t like leaving bad reviews, but I’ve never been so appalled with a restaurant before. Firstly, we arrived ten minutes late, for which I apologised as we had been stuck in traffic. The response was a rude “well I’ve given away your table now, wait over there and I’ll see if I can find you a table in the next ten minutes”. Wish we hadn’t bothered. We waited an hour for our starter, which I had to ask where it was. It was fondue and it arrived lumpy and lukewarm at best and nowhere near to the same quality we have experienced before. I appreciate it was very busy, but I was with my 12 year old daughter, treating her before a concert. She was witness to a lot of explicit language from both chefs and waiting staff. Staff making vulgar remarks about customers because they rightly complained about the standard of food and the time it took for food to arrive. After the starters I decided to cancel the rest of the meal and get my very distressed daughter out of there. The atmosphere was horrible. I wouldn’t mind but it took a further 20 minutes to get the bill sorted. Awful evening and no one apology for delayed food, bad language and unprofessional behaviour, or poor...