Carluccio's Bluewater

The staff at Carluccio's was very nice and polite. They asked if we had any allergies to food. Which was a nice tuch. We had a request that we wanted a smaller pizza 🍕witch they were happy to do. Our food came out fairly quickly, but we weren't disappointed. Tasty food quick service, what more do we want.

Carluccio's Bluewater: A Festive Fiasco. Now bear in mind Carluccio's lost its soul years ago and is now a brand owned by the Boparan group. At their Bluewater restaurant, I'm not sure what's worse: the service or the food. Let's start with the service. It was like waiting for a bus on a deserted island - slow, infrequent, and utterly unhelpful - especially when half a carafe of water was spilled onto my wife by accident. When our food finally arrived, it was a culinary catastrophe. The "festive menu" was a rip-off of epic proportions. The duck arrancini were more like deflated footballs than delicate morsels and had very little rice in them... Squidgy little things they were!. And the Sardinian Fragola? Probably a recipe from Slough rather than from Cagliari: It tasted like something straight out of a microwave not a Sardinian kitchen. Lumps of fragola topped with butterflied shrimps...no sauce, no taste...not the stew the menu promised. The bruschetta was a hard toast topped with halves of cherry tomatoes. The ravioli bathed in a sorry sauce and tasted half as good as the ones from that German supermarket. If you're looking for authentic Italian food and decent service, avoid this place like the plague. You'll save your money (£61) and your taste buds.

Oh where to begin. Let's start with the good parts about the restaurant. The decor is pretty good and it hasn't changed much over the years. The staff have changed a lot except for one person and he's doing his best to try and make things better. The rest of the staff are friendly but they do need more training to get up to scratch. They are attentive and do listen to any complaints The food. Oh boy. Ever since the old manager left, it's just been going downhill. After a few months of not coming in (we were out and exploring places other than our hometown), me and my mother decided to come back again today. The arancini sauce had no spice, the mushroom risotto was bland and had the consistency of PVA glue. The olives were extremely over salted because they were just left in the brine. The penne giardiniera, pasta wasn't even undercooked it was just dough, the sauce was over salted and the dish couldn't be eaten. It was sent back, and it came out wrong a second time. Not great. I don't think I'll be going here again unless the food improves. Check your bill as well because they forget to change the bill if you have one of the set menus