A good value Italian chain (Zizzi's (Maidstone))

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Zizzi's (Maidstone)
Date:	04/06/09 (67 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good selection of dishes, nice environment, good value

Disadvantages: Not good for low-carbers!!

Having noticed there are several restaurants in my local town listed on this site, many of which I have eaten at, I decided to write a few reviews of them. One such restaurant is Zizzis. When it first opened in the town a few years ago, I had never heard of the Zizzi chain and in fact didn't know that it was a chain restaurant until I looked into it a little more.

Zizzis is a chain of Italian restaurants which aim to give customers a decent Italian meal experience at good value prices. They offer a wide range of Italian dishes, naturally a lot of pasta, pizzas and salads etc are on the menu.

The Zizzis Restaurant in Maidstone is a large building along a street lined with various other restaurants - one of the more succesful areas of development in the town in recent years. The front is predominately composed of large windows which let plenty of light in during the day making much of the restaurant nicely lit, not too bright but bright enough that you don't strain your eyes when reading the menu. in the summer months the windows are often opened up making most of the frontage open. This great as it allows plenty of air into the building so it doesn't get
too hot. That said I personally wouldn't really want to be seated directly by one of these windows as the road can be a bit busy with people walking past on nice evenings.

The decor in the restaurant is fresh and clean with a slightly rustic feel to it making for a nice eating environment. I had noticed that the restaurant is often fairly full which is always a good sign.

As I have mentioned, the menu is composed of a quite wide variety of Italian dishes. When we visited we started with some mixed olives and a selection of breads which were served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The bread was very nice, light and warm and very enjoyable. The olive were pretty good though could have been a bit better, they felt a little squishier than I would have liked but they tasted ok.

For the main course the gorup of us all had different dishes, one friend had Spaghetti Bolognaise which he thoroughly enjoyed - personally I would have preffered there to be a bit more sauce but I suppose traditionally this kind of dish tends to be fairly sparring with the sauce. My girlfriend and I decided to share our choices so we got to try two different dishes.

I went for a Penne Della Casa, which comprised of smoked pancetta, chicken, mushroom sauce and spinach topped with cheese. When it arrived, I was quite pleased to feel that the dish was very hot - so many restaurants put food onto cold places which means it gets cold really quickly - also the food itself was reasonably hot. The food itself was nice though again I felt the ratio of pasta to other ingredients was a little too in favour of the pasta, which lets face it is the cheapest ingredient and easy to bulk a dish out with. It was however quite tasty and I made certain to finish it.

My girlfriend decided on Linguine Gamberi - Sautéed tiger prawns with tomato and chilli served with a tomato sauce. Again the dish was nice and hot and the food a decent temperature. As with all the dishes we had that evening, there was rather more pasta than anything else which personally I felt could be better but it was very flavoursome and we enjoyed it.

Having filled up on bread and huge amounts of pasta, we were quite full up but decide to have a look at the dessert menu anyway. Upon seeing (as I would have hoped for an Italian restaurant) Tiramisu I decided to give it a try. It arrived and was a reasonable sized portion and looked pretty good. Flavourwise it was slightly more coffee flavoured than I like my Tiramisu and there was slightly less of a masala twang at the back of the flavour but on the whole it was really quite nice.

The service throughout the evening was pretty good though nothing exceptional. Having worked as a waitor myself I am quite critical about waiter service in restaurants and expect good service. On this evening, I would say the service was up to a level that I would expect from any restaurant but didn't do anything be better than anywhere else.

Overall we had an enjoyable evening, with good food in a pleasant environment, and I shall certainly be happy to go back. I would recommend the Maidstone Zizzis to anyone looking for a good value Italian meal, though it really is not the place for you if you are on a low carbohydrate diet!!!

Summary: A nice dining experience