Zizzi - Winchester — Restaurant in Winchester

Firstly, I must state that I have never had a bad experience with Zizzi's after many years of going to their restaurants, and I very rarely leave any reviews. But I just had to write about how poor my experience was with them yesterday after my first experience in the Winchester branch. The restaurant was not full either so this is no excuse.

On entry - Took about 5 minutes to be seen to at the front door. The person manning this apologised for the wait and that he "wasn't made to work weekends". It took over 15 minutes for our drink order to be taken.

Starters - The starters arrived in good time after our drinks which was one bit of good news. But no cutlery, no serviettes especially given I was due be to handling prawns. After spending two minutes trying to get someone's attention, my partner went up to the bar and requested these. It then took over 5 minutes to get these to the table, by which point both starters were slightly warm at best. Both of these weren't enjoyable cold, and despite me telling this to the waitress she did not care, just a "sorry". Disastrous start to say the least.

Mains - These were served to the table less than a minute after finishing our starters. Again no cutlery to start eating this course.. By this point we had finished our first drink, weren't offered another and weren't asked if the food was ok. We had just finished our starters so naturally couldn't finish our mains, but the food was adequate. 45 minutes after having the second round of cutlery literally thrown onto the table, we finally were approached by a waitress who just said "do you want the bill?". Speechless... We had intended on dessert and a few more drinks but couldn't bear to give another penny after such an embarrassing experience. An elderly couple eating next to us requested a dessert menu, 20 minutes later were asked "do you want the bill?" - like us flabbergasted about being completely forgotten about or ignored. By the time we had left the restaurant, our food still hadn't been cleared from the table - just ushered out as quickly as possible.

In summary, the worst restaurant experience I've had and an absolute disgrace to Zizzi's. We will be visiting ASK Italian next time we are...

Not sure if we went on an off day but it was a disappointing experience. Our waitress disappeared and never returned to give me an answer about the gluten free pizza nor took our drink order. We waited until someone else showed up to take our order. He was friendly and nice but didn’t know which type of flour was used for the gluten free crust and when he asked the kitchen, they didn’t know either and said they buy it. Okay but they don’t even read the package to find out. Food allergies are a big deal so if they’re going to offer gluten free crust they should know what’s in it. Some are made with chickpea flour, rice flour, potato, etc. Really disappointing that they don’t know this.

The pizzas came out in five minutes so we knew something wasn’t right. Our other clue was the woman sitting next to us who sent her meal back. Ours came out cold so we had to ask our waiter to have the kitchen cook it more. Again it came out quickly and not much better than before. Oven issues?

Temperature aside, my husband’s regular pizza (with gluten) barely had any cheese on it. Mine had dried out inedible chicken. I didn’t eat the chicken and was hungry so I ate cold gluten free dairy free pizza. I appreciate that they have the gluten free and dairy free options but they should know their ingredients.

Our waiter deserves to work somewhere better. He’s the only reason I’m giving two stars instead of one. This Zizzi is one we won’t return to. It’s a shame because the...

A group of 6 of us ate here, the drinks took a very long time to come, these were soft drinks and a couple of beers, nothing that actually needed mixing or complicated. The pizzas looked good but perhaps that’s where we went wrong ordering pasta dishes. The food was sloppy and tasteless, the restaurant was full of flies, our food order was incorrect, the mozzarella garlic bread we ordered barely actually has any cheese on it. Lots of little sloppy mistakes with service, such as no knives and forks after food had already arrived. Pudding was extremely disappointing, microwaved chocolate pudding with some ice cream, extremely expensive for what this actually is. Again our drinks didn’t arrive until we had nearly finish our pudding. The toilets were disgusting, the sink was covered in water from a leaking sink, the toilets had not toilet paper, the cubicle I used had a huge hole into a crawl space all uncovered. The staff were obviously frustrated and stressed perhaps thinly stretched, but again as a customer it’s not an issue we control and a dining experience should be pleasant for everyone. It has been a very long time since we have eaten at a place like zizzis, we were totally shocked at how much the food cost here for the quality of it. I believe our pasta was £16-£17 a dish for essentially a sloppy dish of tasteless mush. Perhaps we were just unlucky but it is safe to say we will not be returning to a...