Good range if you like pizza (Bella Italia in General)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Bella Italia in General
Date:	14/05/09 (8 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good pizzas

Disadvantages: Fairly limited non-pizza menu from what I remember

We went to the one in Cribbs Causeway, Bristol - a relative's choice for her birthday, as personally, having had a few bad experiences at this type of eatery when I lived in Clifton, I tend to avoid Itallian restaurants like the plague. I thought my cries of 'please god not Frankie and Bennys, for pity's sake' would've given her the general message that I was not keen to go and pay 15-odd quid for bad Itallian food that night (is Frankie and Bennys even an Itallian restaurant? I've only ever been to one and had chips, so I'm not too sure), but sadly there was the Bella Italia right next door - and it was her birthday, so I was clearly over-ruled on that.

Actually it was all right. Better than I was expecting. Now Cribbs Causeway, which is a giant neon-lit shopping / entertainment multiplex complex and cause of massive traffic jams throughout the summer months, that sits just off the M5 in Avon/Somerset, has only existed for about....what, 12 to 15 years and that said, they've done a surprisingly convincing job on the interior of this place, which is carefully put together in vintage style so it looks like it's been there for ever. Nice dim lighting, tiled floor, wooden tables, vintage photos and bits and bobs decorating the walls - it's all an illusion of course, this being a chain of restaurants which I expect are all largely the same inside (as I have no intention of ever going into another one to check) but it does work quite well.

The place was almost full - with families with kids, as well as couples, and groups - on a Sunday night in April - which seems to be a good sign. The food is....well if you want a choice of a few standard pasta dishes, or pizza, it's fair enough. I had a pizza with artichoke bits and various types of apparently artisan-produced Itallian dried sausage / ham products on it (they called it some bella vista Itallian regional type name, which I forget). It was large in diameter, but this was a VERY thin-crust pizza - so I wasn't all that full by the end of it. It was however pretty tasty but cost £8 to £9 so I didn't think it was amazing value, really. Everyone in our party, except the birthday girl, had some variation on the pizza theme, (she had some kind of fried chicken in sauce at about the same price). This tells you something about the range of choice available on the menu. We also ordered a communal plate of garlic bread, which was a good idea, since even after finishing the pizza some of us still needed filling up, but sadly the garlic bread - though perfectly tasty - was basically made of the exactly same dough as the pizzas, only cooked and severed saturated in a pool of garlicy butter, so that turned out a bit of a samey choice overall.

We didn't have time for starters or desserts as one of our party only ever nibbles at any main meal put in front of them, and another, a three year old, gets impatient in restaurants so I can't comment on those. I will say they looked a bit pricey on the meun to me, but I don't go to a lot of Itallian restaurants so have little basis for comparison.

Bella Italia seems to be a middle of the range place and even for an Itallian food non-enthusiast like me, it was all right. Miles better pizza than the atrocious cheap but low grade 'Pizza Hut' offerings for example (Pizza Hut being the last Itallian-style restaurant I was press-ganged into visiting by someone else). You could do much worse for a meal out.

Summary: Not wonderful value, but if relatives INSIST on Itallian probably better here than many other places