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.

Really expensive for what we got, which was probably why it was very quiet. That's a brand thing rather than for this restaurant though. Nice enough restaurant with a lakeside location ar Bluewater. Close to the car parks. Staff friendly and even kept a bit of shopping we forgot when we went back later to see if they had it.

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.