Zizzi - Manchester Trafford Centre — Restaurant in Trafford

We have come to the restaurant and waited about 3 minutes before someone spoke to us. Before us there were 3 lads who got turned down because there was “no tables”, they “didn’t have a booking” and the “wait time is over an hour” apparently. Then we were asked if we have a booking. I said I tried making one online and it didn’t let me, even though it said my time was free and there were tables. The manager said, yes we are very busy. I looked around and I said are all those free tables for two booked up then? He said yes, and we were also told the wait time is over an hour. I looked inside and outside of the restaurant and there was about 80% of the tables free. I walked off with my boyfriend but because I already had some love2shop vouchers cashed in at zizzis I didn’t want to let it go, considering there were more than half tables free. I then had no problem booking a table online for 7:15 ohh hey what a surprise right? We then walked back in literally 2 minutes later and I showed that same manager my booking that I had just made, he tried to pretend it wasn’t showing even though I have an email. I said can you please refresh your tablet, and surprise there was only my booking and no other bookings so what? They are not even booked up like he said 2 mins ago when he turned us down. He then had no choice to let us in. We got seated and waited for about 15 mins before my boyfriend got bored and asked another manager to come serve us. We then ordered food. The manager who was serving us was blunt and seemed annoyed to do his job and was kinda rude and inattentive. They didn’t wear any name tags so cant say any of the names. There were about 5 staff, 2 managers and 3 kitchen staff. The whole of the inside of the restaurant was empty. The outside had like 3 groups sitting. The manager was then stood outside ignoring other customers talking loudly on his phone and laughing about his personal conversation. Whilst we were waiting for food there was about 7 couples and about 10 other groups of people being turned down because they “didn’t have a booking” even though the whole restaurant was practically empty. So in the space of 30 mins whilst we were waiting for food there was about 30 people in total being turned down so the company lost about £40 per couple which would have been way over £1000 in profit. What a joke right? Now I never seen anything like this in my whole life of going out for food. The food by the way was beyond average. My boyfriends pizza reminded me of a plate of weed more than it was a pizza. Ir had like 3 peaces of chicken no cheese and it was covered in rucola to the point where you couldn’t even see a pizza, let alone the pizza itself on the menu didn’t even say that it will come with rucola :D I asked for extra salami on top that I would expect to be baked with the pizza. It had no salami and when I pointed it out the manager just mumbled “sorry” and then walked and took it away. He then came back with a thinest 5 slices of salami that were dead cold just slapped on the pizza and said : “is that ok for you now” excuse me?? How can you talk like that to the customer. Whilst we were eating people still kept being turned away, I honestly never seen this with an empty restaurant and they were not shorted staff like the manager tried to excuse to other couples wanting to be seated. I can honestly say that this experience will prevent me from ever going to zizzi’s again or to recommending it to my friends. I can not believe what had happened today - this sort of stuff only happens in comedy/parody shows :D The fact that I am sitting at home an hour later feeling sick from the food and still thinking about the horrible experience I had today, when all I wanted was nice food on a Sunday evening…. Terrible the whole vibe has put me...

Date and time of visiting: 23/3 18:00-19:42 No. of pax: 3

We settled the £32.20 bill by 2 gift cards worth £35 (£20 and £15 respectively), it was supposed to have an amount of £2.8 balance left in the gift card - which is just a primary level subtraction.

After having settled the bill we asked to have our print-at-home gift cards back but were repeatedly told by the waiter "No balance left and it's in the bin".

Manager came through and the discussion lasted for a while but we found there wasn't any way to reach the point of understanding - unfortunately even more confusing.

We were full of doubts:

Waiter kept saying there wasn't any balance left in the gift card Did it mean there was £0 balance left in the gift cards? But the bill was just £32.20

Manager telling us they can't give back the balance Was she presuming we requesting a new issue of gift card with an updated balance? Of course we not, we do know any gift card balance will be updated automatically and it is unnecessary to issue a new one after each time of consumption

They insisted not to give back the printout gift cards to us because "those were in the bin" Although the balance can be checked online without having a physical gift card in hand, we don't think it's appropriate to throw away a cash equivalent gift card with unspent value which can be used by anyone We can't understand the insistency of refusing to return something belongs to us, even though something might be considered as waste

We gave up to discuss any more and just asked to get back the threw-away gift cards as well as the receipt of the meal.

Later the night, we checked the balance of the gift cards online and found the total value of £35 in the gift cards was used up (That's why the gift cards became waste of the bin) and found the difference of £2.8 was counted as tips which was listed in the bill.

It's meaningless to discuss if their service worth this £2.8 tips, it is completely an unauthorised transaction - no one has ever made us aware of this transaction even though there had been a prolonged conversation about the bill and the gift cards.

Please Zizzi can you give a response to these?

Is this a tradition of your restaurant to use up customer's gift card value and count the balance as tips without customers' consent? (Fortunately we haven't bought a £100 worth gift card)

Is this also a tradition of your restaurant to throw away customers' gift card and refuse to return upon customers' request? (Fortunately we didn't give them the electronic format gift card by an iPhone or I had to pick it up...

We might have gone at a bad time but when my mum and I went we had to stand for five or ten minutes at the entrance waiting for someone to greet us and take us to our table. It was very awkward and set a very bad tone, especially as there weren’t many people dining. When we were finally greeted, we were warned by the host that they only had one chef working at the moment so the wait time might be long. We said fine.

The wait time wasn’t actually that long and it was the least of our concern.

We ordered the bruschetta and there was a bug on it. Understanding that the kitchen might be backed up, we didn’t bring it up to our server and just didn’t eat it. The two pastas we ordered sucked. They were so bland. No flavour whatever. We didn’t even have salt or pepper on our table. Actually, we didn’t even have knives. Whoever cleaned and readied our table clearly was half asleep.

We also ordered tiramisu for dessert. We didn’t receive it.

After asking for takeaway boxes for the pasta (we didn’t want to waste food and were planning to make something out of it) we got our bill but the server didn’t bring up the fact that we had no tiramisu on our table. So we asked him about it and he said he was told a couple minutes before that they ran out. Weird he didn’t tell us until we were about to pay but okay.

He offered to get us another dessert, we asked for the cake. He goes to ask the manager, I’m assuming, if they have any. They don’t.

Thank goodness they gave us a discount and only made us pay for one set meal. But the problems didn’t stop there. Their card machine wouldn’t work. He had to get another one. That didn’t work. After like ten minutes of faffing about the original one started working. Yay.

We asked for a bag for takeaway boxes, we thought it odd he didn’t ask but that’s alright.

It took him five minutes to find one.

All of these inconveniences would have been fine with us if the food was actually decent. Added all together though, it made for a very poor and miserable lunch.

That being said, we hold no grudge against our server. He was very lovely and looked flustered. We understood that it might just been one of those day and none of this reflected on the server. It was clearly a management issue.

In conclusion, we will never go back there again and do not recommend...