After a weekend spent decorating it was a welcome relief to go out for a decent meal on Monday night, so me and a couple of mates went to the Italian restaurantZizzi, located in the centre of St Albans.
I'd never been to this particular restaurant before, although a few weeks ago I did go to Zizzi in Nottingham, which was just as good.
Zizzi is a pretty big place and actually feels like a huge conservatory thanks to the big windows. The interior is nicely decked out with a wooden flooring, and there's a ramp for disabled access. I suppose the central gimmick of Zizzi is that the kitchen
area is clearly visible from the dining area - it's actually an integral part of the restaurant, so even before the food is served you can smell the pizzas being cooked from the huge ovens.
To be honest I did get a little worse for wear during the evening, so this op is going to get less and less detailed as it progresses! As soon as we arrived we were taken to a table by a waitress, and ordered the first bottle of house wine (red) to share.
I'm not exactly Jilly Goolden so I can't go into too much detail over the wine. To me it tasted like one of those bottles you see going for £3 in a special offer in Tesco, but we got charged over £10 a bottle! Nice fat profit for Zizzi, I'm sure.
The restaurant is large so it was nowhere near full on Monday, but it's probably worth booking ahead at weekends. There was a good informal atmosphere, while at the same time feeling a bit more classy than Pizza Hut or something similar.
For starters I had a salad type-thing with peppers in (I don't know the proper name!), one of my mates had a thing that looked like cheese on toast, and we had a bowl of marinated olives to share. The olives were lovely (I ate about 80% of them!) but the salad was a bit like a shredded iceberg lettuce with a couple of bits of pepper in. Not too impressive really. My mate was a bit disappointed with the measly amount of cheese on her toast, but when she asked the waitress it was whipped away and replaced with a huge dollop of cheese, which was really good service.
By this stage we were onto the second bottle of wine and were ready to order the main meal. I went for a Sofiapizza (because it was easy to pronounce) - it had chicken and a couple of other meats on. One of my mates had another pizza, the other had pasta in a pesto sauce. The service is not exactly fast, but it's not slow either. It's more "relaxed". There's a good variety of Italian dishes, and plenty of tempting-sounding things to choose from the menu.
It may just be my experience, but the waiter serving us was very flirty with one of my mates, and got more so as the evening progressed! Maybe it was his Italian accent doing the trick, but it was certainly entertaining to watch!
Anyway, the pizzas are served straight from the kiln-type thing they're cooked in, and they both tasted really good. I know this because my mate couldn't finish his, so I did the decent thing and polished it off for him. Unfortunately my other mate couldn't manage all her pasta, so I had to eat that as well! Three meals for the price of one, ideal!
At this stage we were onto the third bottle of wine and things become decidedly hazy. Having only eaten a starter, a main course and bits of two other main courses, I was obviously in need of a dessert, and this came in the form of an apple crumble with chocolate icecream. It is served straight from the little pan in which it's cooked, and it tasted really good. However, bear in mind that at this stage the wine tasted really good, the waiter was looking really good, everything was looking really good. The crumble could have been awful actually - I'm pretty convinced it was nice.
Before writing this op I was trying to remember whether we had coffee, and I couldn't actually recall. After checking with my mates I was reminded we had cappuccinos, which were really nice (I expect).
We then paid the bill (£75!!!) and asked the flirty waiter to order a taxi. His mind must have been on other things because he didn't, so we asked a waitress and she got a taxi pronto.
Overall I had a really good night out, and if I go there again I will try to stay more sober so I can update this op! The food is reasonably priced and is good value for what you get, and the service on the whole is good. Just watch out for the flirty waiter!!
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