We found ourselves in Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth today at lunchtime and decided to treat ourselves to lunch out. The whole place was heaving with people but eventually we managed to find a restaurant with some spare capacity - it was an Italian place called "Azzurro".
It started off well enough - quick service and the waitress gave Sam a childrens menu that had colouring-in and other activities to do on it. Then it all turned rather surreal.
The waitress brought Sam a paper cup full of broken crayons so he could colour in the picture. After he had fumbled around in the cup reaching for the crayons Claire suddenly realised that as well as the crayons the cup also contained a whole heap of broken glass, each part of which was easily sharp enough to lacerate small hands. We complained strongly and the waitress was very apologetic and took the cup of crayons away to extract the glass.
She returned with it in due course and it still contained five or six pieces of glass. Claire ended up tipping all the crayons out and removing the dangerous parts herself. At this point a waiter came over with our drinks and Claire gave him the remaining pieces of broken glass. He could not have been more indifferent about it.
The food eventually turned up and was Ok but nothing spectacular. A waitress came round offering sprinkled parmesan on our pasta and before Sam had a chance to say "No thank you" she'd smothered his food in it. She definitely gave off an air of impatience. They also managed to get our drink order wrong.
When the bill came there was an item on the bottom labelled 'Optional Service Charge @10%' and this amount had been added before the bottom line. It seemed a bit cheeky to me to add an optional charge to the total so I mumbled to myself about how bad this place was and that we wouldn't come back.
The waitress came over to take my credit card and asked me whether I was happy to pay the optional service charge. "Yes, of course!" I replied. Why are us Brits so rubbish at complaining?
Overall score: Minus several million out of ten. Avoid.
