I Think We had a Bad One. (Bella Italia in General)

Member Name: katygriff

Product:	Bella Italia in General
Date:	09/11/08 (67 review reads)
Rating:

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On my recent trip to London we had to find somewhere to eat on the Saturday night. We decided to go to Bella Italia as there are quite a few in London and it was great that there were quite a few right by our hotel. What I found is that there is a nice atmosphere but the food I am still not sure about. It seems like we had two ok meals and then one very bad one so let me tell you why.

What impressed me most about Bella Italia is that they are in so many good locations that you should be able to find one near to you or near to where you want to go. The one we went to in London was close to Covent Garden and it is a small restaurant which had the Bella Italia logo outside and then seating upstairs and down. It was decorated with brown walls and accessories and had some very interesting pictures to look at around the eating areas.

When you walk in the upstairs is quite small and there is a bar there and then downstairs has more seats and another bar. The seats are quite close together so the whole place feels very cosy and has a nice atmosphere with very low music in the background which is nice because you can talk to each other properly.

So the most important thing is the menu and they had a great choice of meat dishes, vegetarian dishes, pastas and pizzas and at very reasonable prices. The pizza I had was a margarita but then I had red onion put on it which was lovely and that was about £8 and it was huge. My fiancé had lasagna which was about £9 which was also quite big but he did have some garlic breads to go with it.

My mom and dad had a chicken dish which was £12 and looked lovely and then my sister had pizza with me. They have great choices though and especially because with some of them you can customize such as the pizza and then they have sides such as garlic bread and chips at about £3 each and they are big portions. For starters they have shared platters and such starting at about £4 each but we didn't have any.

We also didn't have any puddings but they had some great choices with cheese cake and then waffles which I was tempted with but was just too full by this point.

So why didn't I like the meals. Well to be honest with you the chicken dishes looked great and so did the pizzas when they first came out but they were burnt down one side so obviously not put right into the oven correctly. They also tasted very rubbery and they did not put much red onion on my pizza and I actually counted eleven pieces which as you can imagine for a big pizza is nothing.

What really made me mad though was the lasagna. It was warm around the outside which is what my fiancé eats first and then when he got to the middle it was freezing cold. We actually couldn't get a member of staffs attention and after fifteen minutes we gave up. It had obviously been put in the microwave or oven on the wrong heat but how vile as literally half the lasagna couldn't be eaten.

I also was not much for the staff in this Bella Italia as it seems that smiling was completely off the menu. I know they were busy but they were lacking the basic customer service skills!

We paid for our meal using Tesco vouchers which was good as all we had to pay for were the drinks. A wine was about £4, a lemonade was £2.50 and my pineapple juice was around £2 so not badly priced at all.

So would I recommend Bella Italia? Based on this single experience I would say no but to be honest I have been to other ones so maybe this was just a bad night for them. The atmosphere is nice and there is a good choice on the menu but the food is not that amazing but it is ok.

I am going to give Bella Italia two stars as it's a shame but I do think we had some bad luck and cold food when it is supposed to be hot is just disgusting.

Thanks for reading.

xxx

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