Verdi's Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in St Albans

A cosy Italian restaurant at the corner of Clarence Park. This location offers excellent views from your table facing out through sweeping terrace windows. We choose the pizza, and whilst they got a lot right. They also got some elements wrong.

Starting with what was right:

The base was a lovely and fluffy Italian style with a good taste and great mouthfeel. They could have added a touch more salt but that would be down to personal preference so I don't hold ill will on that case.

The sauce had great flavour with the right blend of sweetness and salt. It could have been cooked down a little more to reduce moisture and intensify the flavour further.

What was wrong:

The pizza as a whole could have done with more consideration to ease of eating. I had the porcini pizza with Parma ham and the Parma ham was laid on top in full cuts. Whilst this looked pleasing to the eye it made eating a nightmare as with one wrong move you have stripped the pizza of all toppings.

The porcini mushrooms themselves had likely been stored in olive oil to increase shelf life. So whilst the distinctive flavour remained, the texture was not pleasing.

Finally, the centre of the pizza was a little soggy which had prevented the base from cooking all the way through and becoming properly crisp. This is an easily fixed issue that can be tackled in a couple of ways. The easiest, reducing the moisture content of the pizza by further cooking down the sauce base and switching to a lower moisture mozzarella.

In summary:

The restaurant is worth a visit, particularly in the summer months, to enjoy the relaxed environment and good food. There are a few easily fixed elements to improve that would make this a five star experience. They could benefit from decreasing the menu size as with five pages of options they might be spreading themselves a little thin. The ice cream selection is amazing and perfect on...

Update of the review :

The restaurant replied it was 6 hours since I sat on the 4 people table , which is wrong !!!! I met my friends at 11ish so 3 of us making sense sat on a 4 people table, and then since they left I was there tried to finish my coffee while on a phone talk and we finished at around 1:30pm , I knew it as I checked the phone record for this again ! So not 6 hours at all !!!! And indeed at that time the restaurant was pretty empty too !

Again I would be more than happy to move to the sofa area , I usually do it myself . So if the staff would ask this politely that would be more than okay !

So that was first the staff being rude on site and now replying the review with non truths?

—— I feel everything was quite good until today.

My friends and I had breakfast and coffee here and after they gone, I stayed to finish my coffee.

Before my coffee was finished I was in a phone call , the lady staff with short blonde hair just come interrupt my call and then took away my unfinished coffee .

And while I was still on the phone call , she asked me to move from the table to sofa area, spoke like I didn’t consume anything here before .

Last checked before she did so, there’s not even someone waiting there . I would be happy to move if she ask me politely but she didn’t .

That kind of ruined my impression here . I almost come here every day and had good interactions with all other staff but this incident really ruined my...

Ordered a panini to takeaway, and a girl immediately behind me ordered a pizza. 10 minutes pass, the pizza arrives for the girl who happily walks away with her lunch. I waited another 10 minutes (20 minutes in total) and got fed up of waiting. A asked a young waitress for a refund as I couldn’t wait any longer. She asked the “chef” how long it would be and this terribly rude man lashed out with a verbal outburst at the poor young girl who was merely asking a question on my behalf. I shouted through the hatch at the man telling him how rude he was to which he ignored me which pretty much summed up the character of this coward. The girl couldn’t apologise enough - I kept reassuring her that it wasn’t her fault and I was in fact sorry that she was subjected to that abuse from a fellow colleague. Whoever he was, he does not belong in hospitality, and if it takes him 20 minutes to make a panini on a quiet Monday afternoon, he shouldn’t be working as a “chef” either. I won’t return again, which is a shame as I walk around Clarence Park up to 2 times every day. Shame on you and shame on Verdi’s for allowing this sort of behaviour. I hope nobody ever speaks to his daughter in this way if he has one. I took the panini as it was unsurprisingly ready the moment I asked for a refund, and to remain honest, it wasn’t bad but no way was it worth £8.90. If this place is up for sale as others suggest, I hope this person doesn’t remain in place...