Zizzi - Newark

My elders to dinner at the birthday of my father on Sunday at 12.30 clock it was just okay. although the restaurant was really quiet, we had to wait until we had to wait. then the waitress would only take our drinks orders and refused to take our food order (why?) when the food finally arrived, the pizza was only warm and the meatballs were over spicy. we had to wait so long to order dessert that we gave up and went to pay. it's a shame, as always other zizzi, in which I was much better.

The place was busy so service was very slow. My only gripe with food was the amount of prawns in it. There were only 3 in the whole dish apparently there should have been 6. Would have been better but still not enough for the price of the dish. It was very tasty though.

Unfortunately the service let the place down. Great atmosphere, food was good, but the staff were not attentive, they had to be reminded twice about a drinks order, one of our party's food arrived 10 minutes after everyone else (admittedly they didn't charge for this which was good) but when you go out to eat together, you expect to eat together. They didn't check on us to find out if everything was ok, or ask if we needed additional drinks and the main course was at least 45 minutes after our starter dishes had been cleared which I think it a little too long when you're out for lunch! Disappointing

We arrived ffor our 1.00pm booking (table booked through Open Table no problem). We were seated quickly, and our order taken within approximately 15 minutes, our starter arriving shortly after. Unfortunately we had finished the starter before our drinks had arrived I would have thought it would have been done the other way around and we were quite thirsty by that time. It was after that, that we began to wonder if our food was going to arrive. We enquired at about 2.15pm as to where our lunch was we were informed that they were short on chefs and therefore our lunch would be delayed. The table next to ours was also annoyed because, as like us, they were to be at the cinema for 3.00pm. Both tables believed that if they knew they were going to be short staffed then our booking shouldn't have been taken. We managed to get our main course at about 2.35pm, leaving 25 minutes to eat, pay the bill and get to the cinema. We then felt rushed to get to the cinema. I must stress though that our waiter couldn't have been more helpful. The only thing we felt he should have done was to tell us that they were short staffed and therefore our dinner would take more than an hour to arrive. Despite all of the above, our food was lovely when it came. Our frustration came mainly at not being told that there would be a big delay in getting our food.

First impressions on arrival was that this was going to be a lovely zizzi. It is in a stunning location overlooking the river and the restaurant itself looked really nice. When we went in I said we had a table booked but they had no record of it. I showed the email confirmation but they didn't say anything. They did find us a table but it was in a very cold corner of the restaurant surrounded by tables with children on who were very noisy. There was also a spotlight shining directly in our eyes but they were busy so unable to move. We had chosen Zizzi as we didn't know Newark and were able to book this online. We were going to Newark to drop off a relative at the train station to prevent them having to make changes and wait in the cold. We had booked the table for 6:15 and the train was at 7:45 so we thought we had plenty of time. The waitress looking after our table was nice and helpful and when we explained about the train she was able to make sure out main courses came out quickly as we worried due to how busy the restaurant was. The food was nice with a good vegetarian choice but it wasn't a relaxing atmosphere due to the children and also the light. Disappointing as have visited several Zizzi restaurants before which are more nicer and more relaxing places to eat.