Prezzo Italian Restaurant Clacton On Sea — Restaurant in Tendring

Not at all happy. Was an upsetting visit. It had been booked with buyagift having received it as a birthday present. (£60 on the voucher ) The food we received was no way to that value. Had to order off a much lesser set menu. Also when we confirmed and booked the meal I received an email directly from Prezzo offering a complimentary bottle of prosecco. I asked about this when the waitress first came to ask what drinks we wanted. She informed us very rudely that you can not have that as only one voucher is allowed per table ! Also you had to be spending £25. I said I didn't really see that our booking, although with buyagift, was a voucher....... it had cost £60. The evening went downhill quickly. As I'd said I was not happy it was totally obvious the food I received was bad: starters that arrived luke warm and a main, a pizza, that basically was a piece of flat dough with barely anything on it other than the tomato sauce ....... not a spec of cheese anywhere..... It would have been far better if the buyagift was an amount that could have been used against the 'normal' full menu....... we would probably have spent more than the £60, especially with the incentive of the prosecco ....... and we would certainly have had a meal that we could have chosen specifically ourselves and enjoyed. The whole atmosphere whilst there was not nice and I personally would have left but my partner was obviously eating as well and £60 had been paid by family as a present. when receiving the bill ( as obviously we had bought drinks ) I asked if there was a manager I could speak to........ initially I was pointed to the rude waitress and I said dont bother...as we were getting up to go another member of staff came over and asked if they could offer us a complimentary drink ...........we declined, paid our drinks bill and left. Having visited Prezzo many times in other locations everything has been great .... lovely food and lovely staff. Unfortunately Clacton was the nearest venue to us to use the gift as Colchester was not available. It annoys me more that we actually had to travel 18 miles there and back to...

We have visited various Prezzo restaurants over the years... less so with kids, but a spontaneous trip to Clacton and we found ourselves in the Clacton one. We didn't book and just walked in, there looked to be plenty of tables but the waitress was a bit unsure. After consulting the mighty computer we was allowed to be seated.

As you can imagine, if your a fan of pasta or pizza you can't really go wrong. Kids had an option of a kids menu, albeit I thought it was quite a tad on the expensive side (think it was £7.95 for kids 3 courses but that didn't include drinks). Me and the wife decided to have starters and deserts as we was utilising the taste card 2 for 1 on food (which didn't work on kids set meal)

Starters for kids was a garlic bread, which wasn't all that to be honest and mozzarella dipper things which were square. My son said they tasted good so all good there. I went with the beef ragusa ball things, and the wife went with Calamari. The wife picked better on this occasion, didn't think much of the beef ragu balls - not horrible or anything just pretty average. Calamari was much nicer!

Mains was pizza for kids and wife and Calzone for myself. We were all pretty satisfied - thankfully you can't go too wrong with Pizza. Desert was ice cream and cheesecake. I think cheesecake sort of stole the show for me surprisingly.

All in all it was a nice meal with friendly, attentive staff. I'm glad we had the 2 for 1 voucher as it would have been an expensive meal (not that it was cheap even after the discount to be fair). Would not say no to going to Prezzo again, although would perhaps have second thoughts if taking...

The chairs are spread out and tables, but staff are not wearing any masks, they also were leaning over us to collect plates, never had any distance between us, tried to collect plates without us finishing, we were just talking. If you’re practising the 2 meter rule then this isn’t the place. Most places you leave your plates to one side and they collect, here they lean over you and very close- actually Cm close. We also went on the government night of 50% off, they tried to charge us full price no 50% off because we had a gift card said wasn’t valid with 50% off - tried to explain a gift card is the same as cash, so why wouldn’t it be, they also tried to tell us we had to only choose from a set menu due to gift card. Again had to explain multiple times it wasn’t one of those buy a gift or red letter day ones, it literally was a money gift card, again presented us with a full price bill!! Took a while for them to understand we had £80 on a gift card!! Not a buy a gift one with a set menu. Fancy buying a gift card then being told you have to pay full price- imagine going to a shop with a gift card and being told you cannot use it in the sale 🤦🏻‍♀️. Doesn’t work like that. The portions were also smaller on 50% off night. The pizzas also had black underneath the base and tasted burnt - they need to clean the oven as top wasn’t burnt. My salad as a main looked like a side salad. The manager also smelled very badly of smoke, when she was talking to us. No pleasant when trying to eat....