Prezzo

The food selection was great and the pastas were tasty. The salmon penne, lobster ravioli and mushroom risotto were great. The combo pasta order was not worth it. What really ruined the experience was the service from our «polish» lady server who managed to make everyone uncomfortable. She was not able to understand everyone’s order, and had difficulty getting the drink order. She does not know how to serve the plates without reaching in front of your face.
The place was nicely decorated and the food was tasty but with such a negative experience from 6 people, we collectively agreed we will not be back.

So my birthday treat was to join some friends at Prezzo last weekend for some nosh on a Friday evening. Thankfully we had booked, and had already sensed it was going to be busy by the way the matre D on the phone was negotiating with us one timings due to chef being overloaded.
Arrived at the restaurant which is located on the upper deck of Port Solent and already found the restaurant packed at 8:30pm. But give them credit there was a table ready and waiting, jump queue and sit down!
So you might know Prezzo is a chain of restaurants it positions itself in my mind as a classy Pizza Express. The restaurant is clean, modern and certainly has life in it, but not in the traditional Italian sense. The kitchen is on full display and the hussle and bustle of the chefs cooking and waitresses delivering food adds to the ambiance. Shame there is no stone oven to cook the pizzas, rather some stainless steel equivalent.
Then menu has a reasonable selection of starters, main’s, pizzas etc. Wine list is small and simple with nothing that is really stunning. Its cheap plonk marked up in my view. Bottle of Lanson Champagne was approx £30. Chardonnay was approx £15-£18.
So I went for the calamari for starters and lasagne for main. So the calamari was not great, very scrappy pieces deep fried. The lasagne again was nothing to write home about. Wife had a chicken, cream pasta dish which she loved.

Prezzo serves great Italian food. The pizzas in particular are excellent. The staff are very nice and the service quite quick. If it’s a warm, sunny day you can sit outside on the balcony with great views over looking Port Solent harbour and Portsdown Hill.