L'Artista — Restaurant in Watford

I was here for dinner yesterday and overall, it was a vastly mediocre experience. Let me preface this with the fact that I understand restaurants have higher demand during Eat Out to Help Out days, and I have been to a reasonable number of restaurants / pubs since 4th July, so my expectations are calibrated in line with this.

We arrived with a telephone reservation from a week prior, and were still made to wait outside for a while past our reservation time, as it's clear they didn't have a table ready or reserved for us. Not a good first experience. COVID mitigations were the worst of any, and can count 10+, establishments I have been to so far. The distance between tables was on the crowded side, with no additional measures such as screens etc. Worse still, there was no encouragement to use hand santiser upon entry (everywhere else I've been to have front of house watching you use it) and no track and trace QR codes or login numbers published anywhere. The restaurant was also uncomfortably noisy, due to design, capacity and lack of sound deadening or softer furnishing. So much so that I've had to raise my voice much louder than I would at a typical pub or bar, where you'd expect it to be louder than a restaurant.

Service was initially super quick; 90 secs to offer a drink, and about 3-4 mins to offer to take our order, but this was to the point of feeling like they wanted us to clear off the table to bring in the next cover. Service throughout the meal was the one thing I can talk positively about, but actually getting our order placed was a nightmare. We weren't ready to order 3-4 mins after sitting down and so asked for a bit more time. After that nobody came to take our order. Even after getting the attention of 4 different people, it took 10+ mins between having our choices made and finally being able to place an order.

The food was, at best, reasonably described as 'average'. I can't say any specific bit was bad, but the majority of the ingredients and dishes were just a bit 'meh'. This was echoed by the people who I'm dining with, who are usually quite polite and easy to please.

All in all, I'll say it's good to see a local business back on it's feet, but I won't be going back there in a hurry. Plenty of nicer alternatives within...

I had heard great things about this restaurant from friends and family, so I decided to book it for my birthday. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a really disappointing experience from start to finish.

We went on a Sunday evening around 5pm, and although the restaurant wasn’t that busy, the service was chaotic. We had about five different servers throughout the evening, all of whom seemed confused and uncoordinated. It was clear there was no leadership on the floor — the manager was just walking around aimlessly instead of actually organising the team.

Our food arrived at completely different times. The pasta came out first, and we waited a full ten minutes before the pizzas arrived. When they finally did, the presentation was sloppy — they looked rushed, one was burnt on the edges, and there was a hair under the pizza on the plate, which was off-putting to say the least. The risotto was bland and lacked flavour. On the positive side, portion sizes were generous and the décor of the restaurant was quite nice.

We were asked if we wanted dessert three separate times by three different staff members — another example of how disorganised everything was. When it came to paying, the manager tried to take my card out of my hand to put it into the machine, which as someone who also works in hospitality, I know is not acceptable unless the customer asks for help.

Adding to the poor experience, Just Eat and Uber Eats drivers were hanging around the entrance near our table, which was distracting and didn’t create a welcoming environment. We took one of the pizzas home, but the takeaway box we were given was dirty on the bottom — not something you expect from any restaurant, let alone one with a good reputation.

Sadly, despite the nice décor and portion sizes, the overall experience was far from what I expected and certainly not birthday-worthy. I won’t...

Came here at around 4:50pm, there were 2 tables with families but other than that it was fairly quiet. Lots of staff were there mostly chatting amongst themselves, including the manager. After turning around and trying to give a little sign nobody was coming. My partner had to get up twice, once to ask for a kids menu and again to ask for sauce. I was surprised to hear they didn’t have a kids menu as it stated on google and they would just half the meal for us, but i was okay with that. Two other people came in and they sat them right next to us (the tables are very close together) so the highchair and the ladies chair were touching one another. On the other side they sat a couple down with one table between us, to which another couple joined their table. They were very rude, loud and constantly swearing and that was not nice. Although the manager cannot control what other people say it would have been nice for him to consider that there was my young child and other customers in there that do not need to hear the things coming out of their mouth. When it came around to ordering unfortunately they said it isn’t possible to do a smaller pizza as the dough would be too thick ? We ordered the calamari and garlic bread for starters, garlic bread was lovely and the calamari was inedible, in mine and my partners opinion, we got some garlic sauce for it to try and make it slightly better but was still not very nice. We ordered the Penne Arrabbiata and added some chicken. The pasta itself was nice, standard Arrabbiata. The chicken added in was dry and chewy which was disappointing, but i chose to add the chicken. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this place unless you are okay with mediocre food and...