Prezzo: Good Food, Bad Service

For the evening part of my mum’s birthday celebrations (awesome day btw!!) we decided to go as a family to Prezzo in Blandford, Dorset as it is really our only local restaurant in which all the family can find something they like to eat (we do have a couple of fussy eaters!!) There were 9 of us in total, including my 9 year old nephew Rowan, and Alyssa in her car seat. Upon arrival we were immediately taken in to be seated, and luckily they had a chair available for me to put Alyssa’s seat on which worked very well throughout the night.

We were all given menus, and left for 10 minutes and then asked which drinks we would like, at which point we discovered none of us had been given drinks menus! The waitress (will be referred to as the brunette as this will matter later) helpfully and apologetically brought some over and we ordered drinks as well as Olives and Bread for the table. 15 minutes later our drinks arrived with frosted ice-cold glasses (which I love), at which point we also had to request a children’s menu as one had not been provided for my nephew!

We were finally able to order our food, 5 minutes later which was great as I had been starving myself all day. Now, I am a bit of an olive fiend – bloody love them!! So you can imagine my disappointment, when the olives and bread never arrived. Instead, albeit very quickly indeed, our starters were brought out. They looked delicious and I am sure they were originally warm, but we were all polite enough to wait until everyone had their food and my sister-in-law’s (vicky’s) arrived 5 minutes after ours. Magically during this 5 minutes, not a single member of staff was visible on the dining floor – magic! Anyway, despite this, the starter was absolutely delicious. I had Grilled goats cheese (I am also a cheese fiend) on a bed of beetroot and bruschetta, with a balsamic glaze dressing and rocket. Delicious!

We all cleared our plates swiftly, some more than others. Now call me old fashioned, but I don’t think the table should be cleared until all members of a party have finished eating – apparently Prezzo don’t have this policy, as they cleared plates away after every course when someone was still eating. Now you might assume that this was because our mains were ready and they didn’t want them getting cold… hate to burst your bubble but we then waited 25 – 30 minutes for our mains. I ordered the Wild Mushroom Pizza, which has a garlic bechamel base and some rocket (Italians love rocket on everything in my experience). The flavours were amazing, different mushroom tastes coming through and lovely zingy cheese. They only bad point was that the base/dough was quite tought to cut with normal cutlery, and that went for all of us. We had some Truffle fries on the table to share which were crisp and flavoursome.

We had brought a birthday cake with us, and the brunette very kindly put the candles on, dimmed the lights and the entire restaurant joined in singing happy birthday to my heavily embarrassed mum (tee hee hee). We did, however, decide to go for the full experience and take the cake home and order dessert. So when the lights came back on we asked for dessert menus from The Blonde (assuming manageress as different uniform and been there years) who brought them over swiftly, without the smile that had been missing the entire evening. Half an hour later, we finally asked if we could order (bare in mind there were only 4 other tables in the entire restaurant that were occupied) from The Blonde, who’s response was “Yes, what?” So we ordered. Two minutes later, The Blonde returned and informed us they were out of the pudding my mum and I had ordered so we would have to choose another. Which we did and our desserts arrived ten minutes later.

 (Apologies, picture taken after initial eagerness!) I had the honeycomb cheesecake. It was nice. It had a creamy filling, which got slightly sickly towards the end, small bits of honeycomb though not a whole lot, and a sweet chocolate sauce that might have been better if it was dark and bitter to counterbalance the cheesecake. But as I said very nice.

In total, we were there for 3 hours, meaning it took them an hour per course to serve us. What we discovered on paying was that they also, had automatically put on a 10% service charge, which after we had paid, we discovered was actually optional. If we had realised this, we probably would have removed it and left a smaller tip. Whilst I appreciate the fact that a party of 8 can be a lot of work, we were not particularly loud, most of us only had 1 drink and I do not think we made any demands other than to ask to order, and yet The Blonde was miserable the entire evening and at some points down right rude. As for being baby friendly? Well, The brunette helpfully gave me a chair to put Alyssa on, there was a baby changing table in the disabled toilets and would have been room to bring in her pram had I wanted to. The food was, indeed, very very good, however the service of one person made the meal a bit of a let down.

So Prezzo Blandford, for food and baby access it would have been 4, but for the entire experience, you get a…

** A Tutu Rating of 2 out of 5! **