Bella Italia

Enjoyed a vey nice pizza with garlic bread, and a coke. I like pizza… while most pizza is good, this particular pizza was fantastic.
The establishment was busy (which is good), a bit on the loud side but okay, and the attention from the waiter was welcomed.

I never thought finding a place for a pre-​show dinner would be so difficult! However Bella Italia managed to squeeze us into a table. We sat upstairs which was quite cozy as they had managed to squeeze quite a few people into a small space. We started with the Mozzarella Carrozza. It’s only fried cheese and really needed more sauce to add flavour. It then took nearly 30 mins for our mains to come out. Since it took so long for the mains to come out we had to eat really quickly in order to make our show. Unfortunately this killed some of the enjoyment of the food. We had the Bucatini Lunghi al Ragu d’Agnello, spaghetti in a lamb and red wine sauce. The lamb sauce was nice, however the ratio of spaghetti to sauce was seriously lacking. The other main was the Penne Ricce Genovese. This was also nice and there was a bit more sauce to compliment the pasta. Considering they were able to get us in during the pre-​theatre rush I will give them points. However, the food was a bit boring and took ages to cook.

It was funny that we spent over half an hour walking up and down this street trying to look for a restaurant that wasn’t too expensive, had a good menu, and most importantly wasn’t a chain restaurant since we were on vacation. We ended up at Bella Italia which wasn’t the homey family authentic Italian restaurant that we thought haha. It’s a huge chain and thankfully, had a coupon on the back of one of the maps we were carrying. I noticed another table show their map and realized I was carrying around the same one!
Anyway, to the food… it was decent. Nothing spectacular here — the pictures almost speak for themselves. The service is slow (but albeit, the dining room was packed). This was not one of the memorable meals of my trip.

I was pleasantly surprised by the pizza served here. My vegetarian pizza came with delicately baked peppers and red onion quarters nestling alongside roughly cut slices of fresh mozzarella. The base was a good effort, with extra marks for being rolled in coarse semolina. I liked the faintly Amelie-​style décor of the restaurant too. I’ll be back.

Incredibly long wait for someone to acknowledge us at the door, then a massive wait for someone to take our order, a long wait for food, then we had to walk to the front of the restaurant and ask them for the bill.
It’s almost laughable that they include the word gratuity on the bill, as I couldn’t possibly bring myself to pay extra for their service. If I ignored customers for that long where I work, I’d get the sack.
The food itself was hit and miss. The lasagne was incredibly bland, where my partners meatballs and pasta were full of flavour. If you’re a garlic fan I recommend the garlic and mozzarella bread sticks. Then again, if you’re hungry, I wouldn’t recommend coming here.

This is definitely in my top 5 ‘Worst Restaurant Experiences’. After waiting half an hour or so for our meals to arrive we asked how much longer it would be. Someone else appeared apologising that «all four plates» have been smashed on the floor, hence the delay. Hmmm. When our meals finally arrived, 2 out of 4 were incorrect. One was simply the wrong meal, and the other was a chicken pasta dish with the chicken missing! As we were in a rush we kept the wrong meal, but the chicken was quite a vital ingredient to the other so this was taken away and returned later on with the chicken included. However, by this time the rest of us had almost finished. A bit of a disaster zone in general. Oh, and the food itself was average.
Not recommended!

I went here for a mates birthday and what a let down.
The food was over expensive for the quality and the menu didn’t have a lot of variety, the service was non exsistant and I don’t even understand why we went.
I really didn’t like it there

Escape from England into your own mini Italy. This restaurant is scenic and cute. The pace is laid back, so you can really make a night of it. The food is lovely and reasonably priced. An all round lovely evening.