PizzaExpress — Restaurant in Test Valley

A bit of a mixed bag for my 1 visit. So lets start with good. The food was absolutely excellent, smiles all around from me and my family at this point, excellent wine aswell.

The not so good, the service. I could feel that therebwas a genuine effort from some of the staff of which I am thankful for, but others their definetly seemed to a sense of frustration the smiles didn't last long, and at one point one of the hostesses rolled her eyes as she couldn't get past a eoman transferring a baby to another person. Which I'd like to add was already mid doing this before the hostess needed access to the area.

The layout seems strange, the tables are fine but the entrance way takes you to a T junction. Left, you have a small pedestal where someone will great you, and arrange for table as normal, but this is actually a very active walk way for the staff. Often carrying things.

My genuine recommendations here, to customers looking to come, do so. The food was exceptional and many of the staff make the service worth while.

To pizza express, I think you guys may need to revisit how you accept your customers/guests. You have a room before this T junction. You would be able to manage the flow of people in this busy area which should make everyones experience better and also maybe help with getting frustrated that your almost bumping into eachother all the time.

I...

Loved the dough balls Al forno (which are covered in cheese and served with cranberry sauce). I originally asked for my pizza (padana Natale) to have the cranberry sauce taken off and Pizza Express offered to put caramelised red onions on top instead. My pizza still came with the cranberry sauce. Which the server was very apologetic for and offered to have a new one made for me. I decided to try the pizza with the cranberry sauce on and in the end kept it. The cranberry sauce is a strange addition to the pizza, but it wasn't off putting. The extra of caramelised red onions though definitely made the pizza so much nicer. They should just keep the caramelised red onions on the pizza in the first place. My husband really enjoyed his porchetta pizza (with pork and bechamel sauce) it was very different and nice. He also enjoyed amaretto dolce Vitta. I had the triple salted caramel cheesecake which was nice. The plan popcorn on top was a little strange but did add a different texture. I think if the popcorn had been sweet then this would have elevated...

The staff have really let this restaurant down, it used to be lovely. We visited tonight though and it wasn't enjoyable as they forgot the water, missed the chicken off the mains but didn't seem bothered - took it to chef for him to check and they all howled with laughter for about 5mins then took 20 minutes to redo and just said sorry it was missed, then the chef was making a racket tiding up to the extent another colleague shushed him. Then they got the bill wrong and hadn't realised they gave us another table's bill and then card machine wouldn't work. On our exit a member of staff walked into me! It was apparent they wanted to go home and weren't bothered about customer satisfaction and service. No compensation was offered and manager left it to the waitress to say sorry for all the mistakes tonight! Not even a complimentary serving of olives was offered whilst we waited 40 minutes in total for the chef to cook two mains! We won't be returning in a hurry. To be honest the service at...