Zizzi - Haywards Heath — Restaurant in Mid Sussex

Myself and my partner and family were extremely excited to be going to Zizzi‘s for a lovely family birthday meal we all got dressed in our favourite clothes and headed out to the restaurant. On arrival we were greeted by a young girl her breath was stale and somewhat eggy. She asked us if we had booked we replied yes we have definitely made a booking and we are so excited to be here, she took us to a table to find that there was only four chairs at the reserve table. We booked for 10 people. We then sat and waited to be served our drinks. The lady came back over and once again I could smell the breath. It was rather offputting, and my son is very sensitive to those sorts of smells, and unfortunately gagged up his crisps and pom bears. We ordered a variety of different drinks from beers to cokes and children’s drinks. My glass of beer came out to my table. It was lukewarm and eggy at Best. My wife ordered a red wine, and there was floating bits of what looked like tobacco reminisces. When I pointed this out to the young lady came over and said that she is extremely sorry they replaced our drinks and yet again my Beer was a little bit stale, warm and eggy. This tells me that the pipes were not cleaned and the lines need checking after 10 minutes of being in the restaurant, the man came over for a third time to ask what food with that we wish to order. His breath was also offensive and made my husband gag. We ordered a variety of different pizzas and pastors. We were so excited to try out these new flavours that were on the menu after waiting for around 45 minutes our food finally arrived my husband’s pizza was cold and cut into six slices instead of eight. This confused him as he has autism and that sort of thing causes his brain to explode. My son he had carrots with Hummus. Hummus was at best, creamy and moist, but unfortunately my voice and gag duties reflex, and the smell was like an unfurnished house that I’ve been left to an old lady with that we asked for the manager to come to the table when he arrived. His breath smell, almost like he’s been licking a dogs bum he spoke to us with a bit of a lisp and told us that he was extremely sorry for the service and food, he’s never experienced anything like this from customers before with that we told him that we would never return to the restaurant. He offered us a free meal on the house,I said no thank you they’re awful waiters and waitresses in here with some odd breath made us feel unwanted an unwelcomed when we arrived home, we all sat in a circle and sung Kumbayah, my lord, we were sad and upset that our meal was ruined by the big company Zizzi’s in the morning. We all woke up with a funny tummy is we suspect this was even the breath of the staff or perhaps the uncooked food either way we had a bad experience here we ask at the restaurant pays a bit more attention to toothpaste and brushes that won’t be so offensive when people are sitting at tables because the smell I can assure you...

We've been to this location a couple of times and it's always been good. On this occasion however, I'm afraid we were left rather disappointed.

We'd booked for an early dinner, so there were very few people there at the time, but we were hurriedly seated by a rather dour and unconcerned person who kept their interactions to the absolute bare minimum. Cutlery was placed on the table in a large bundle.

We recieved only one plate for our shared starter, I resorted to eating mine from the lid of one of the dishes, despite the member of staff obviously seeing me do this. Again, the restaurant was not busy.

My wife's food arrived tepid and rather waxy, but she was unable to engage the member of staff, who appeared to fear, or wished to avoid, any direct eye contact or smiling.

There was no follow up on how we were enjoying our food, and when my wife expressed her disappointment with her meal (which she hardly touched) we recieved a monosyllabic 'sorry' and it was swiftly cleared away.

I think it's reasonable to expect a member of staff to enquire as to the issue and perhaps offer some alternative or concession, but none was proffered.

The bill was brought quickly when asked, which is fine. When paid, there was no thank you or acknowledgement of any kind, but moved immediately on.

I'm sad to say that our experience engendered no sense of hospitality of customer concern. It felt closer to the poker-faced, break-neck service one might experience during lunch service at a fast food chain outlet.

This is a real shame, as it's a great location, but some remedial CS training should certainly...

Obviously, don't let it bother you, but today was a friend of mines birthday; I thought, buying her lunch and having it delivered to her workplace would be a lovely idea. Due to various external factors, I ended up just buying her dessert - but when looking through the suggestions, we eyeballed Zizzi's menu as being one we believed would sufficiently quench the lusts for a wholesome dessert.

Whatever you normally pay your menu writer, double it cos I will admit it, the dessert actually sounded like something you should pay £7.50 for without hesitation. When really, I've seen/tasted better in year 3's cooking classes. It really was a remarkable bit of propaganda.

The thing that makes me most grievous, you suggested the dessert would be paired with salted caramel gelato - this dessert noticeably lacked this crucial component.

In the ideal world, I would have slotted a candle in it - having a tasty yet festive gift to make the day a special one. Weirdly enough, this 3cm x 3cm dessert couldn't accommodate such extravagance. "Historically the worst birthday on record" was the words she used to describe the unfortunate events to the Evening Standard later that day.

It just made me look like a fool. That's all. In the likely event of someone asking, i'm always available for a discussion about a discount on future orders. Which I suspect won't really be a discussion; you will just suggest 50% off my next order, and I'll agree and spend it on arancini balls instead.

But hey, credit where credits due..least they pronounced her name right...