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This was our second time visiting the Italian restaurant located close to the the former Hull City AFC home of Boothferry Park.
Unfortunately we ended up being really disappointed on our first trip (it was relatively new) and after raising our concerns with the manager and receiving some money off our next visit; we decided to give them another chance.
It’s worth noting too that at that stage they were getting A LOT of complaints and shortly after we went they in fact closed down for a short while due to poor
Places to eat in Hull
Where is Ciao Chicchetti?
This Italian all you can eat restaurant is located beside the railway bridge as Anlaby Road turns into Boothferry Road. It isn’t the biggest of restaurants we’ve been to in Hull so we actually had to book a good few weeks in advance.
They have changed their menu since we last went and they have also been issued the highest ‘score on the door’ possible by Hull City Council. I feel it’s one of the best things they could’ve done to close for a short period of time and more recently change the menu for sure!
An italian restaurant Hull
They used to have three types of menu; their quick bite menu started at £13.50pp, standard menu used to be £18.50pp and their premium menu was a staggering £25.50pp.
Although £25.50pp is quite a steep price on the face of it; when you think about the fact it’s all you can eat it does make it feel like you are getting quite good value for money right?
Well no, not really! As I’ve already mentioned our last visit to Caio was not long after it had opened and it was clear they were experiencing some teething problems. Our meals took that long to come out that we ended up leaving before dessert. We did NOT get good value for money and as I already mentioned we fed it back …. privately! I emphasise on the privately as I am not one to publicly complain or leave a one star review on their Facebook page for every Tom, Dick and Harry to see and ended up dropping them a message with our concerned and spoke to the manager directly on the telephone.
During January they’d chosen to introduce one menu for everyone.. it was £10pp, included dessert and if you decided you wanted something that used to be on the premium menu you could pay separately for it.
We booked a table the week before Valentines Day, for 7pm. The menu increases to £12.50pp after 6pm on a Friday and Saturday, they say(!) to cover additional servers and to compensate for the fact we could be in effect there ALL night.
On the £10 menu you are limited to 2 hours which sounds long enough but given the slow service we had experienced previously we wanted a relaxing meal and were happy to pay that little bit extra.
We were asked if we had visited before, explained a long time ago and was sat down at a table. We knew from our past trip that we were to pop our ‘disk’ onto green (something of which wasn’t explained to us on our first visit) however this trip we didn’t even have a disk!
Eventually someone came back and asked if we knew what we wanted. We explained we don’t actually know what we can order or what we had to order first as no one came back. The lady apologised, gave us a red/green disk and explained it was because we didn’t have one of these was probably why no one came to see us. Hopefully the first and last delay to our evening!
We eventually ordered with a lady that seemed very rushed and ended up getting my drink wrong. It’s worth noting, just like last time, no one at any point came back asking if we wanted another drink throughout the whole night… even when the disk was on green NO ONE came for our drink or food order.
This was already not looking to be the nice relaxing meal with friends we were hoping for!
It was eventually explained to us that we should initially order two starters each and then could order anything we wanted from then onwards.
Between all 4 of us we got the pesto garlic bread, dough balls, cheese garlic bread, meatballs and a tomato garlic bread too.
An all you can eat restaurant in Hull
Now it was time for our mains…. the mains we waited forever for! And I am not exadurating!
We knew we had to have the disk on green which means ‘we want food’ and so pretty much didn’t take it off that all night. It made absolutely no difference whether it was on red or green because no one came anyway!
We decided given that we had already waited way longer than we should’ve and STILL hadn’t got our main that we were going to order our second main before we had even received our first!
We were sent what looked like prawn linguine.. something that non of us ordered. This was something that had to be ordered separately and was clearly input incorrectly by the previously rushed waitress so I asked for it to be taken off the bill at the end.
Our mains consisted of ravoili, lasagne, pizzas, calzone and pastas.
Main Courses at Ciao Chicchetti
They were ok. They weren’t anything special and we all commented that at least one of our meals was a little bland.
My lasagne had very little cheese on compared to the one pictured above and was just basically a bowl of mince which was very disappointing because I LOVE lasange!
But when you consider the cost you’ve got what you asked for & it was presented in a nice way with
I even ended up pinching some of my friends salt (which is unheard of because 1) she doesn’t share 😉 and 2) we don’t add salt to our meals) but the meals just seemed to be lacking something.
We ordered a third main when the second one came again because we didn’t want to wait an age again!
Time for dessert
Same with dessert, we asked to order the minute they removed our plates and reordered the second our first puddings were placed in front of you.
Desserts were 100% the best bit without a doubt and we all agreed. Between
Our thoughts..
If you are looking for somewhere to have a relaxing romantic meal with good food I probably wouldn’t consider going here. I hate to say it because, as I’ve already mentioned numerous times, it’s cheap but in my opinion is worth no more than it’s priced at now.
If you are looking for somewhere affordable with the family with ok food then go for it! But with regards to service and quality of food I feel you will get what you paid for and it’s certainly not ‘all you can eat’ due to the lack of service
I’m always one to seek improvements and even made suggestions to the manager previously on what I felt they could work on. This time I would say that, although we apparently ‘paid for’ more servers we certainly didn’t get that
Their service is still not what it should be… and it seems from reviews on Trip Advisor many still agree.
It’s worth noting that from March they are increasing their prices. Not to what they used to be when they first opened but to £11.50pp before
Have you ever been to this Italian restaurant in Hull? What did you think?
If you got value from this post let me know & feel free to share with your friends!
If you too are on the hunt for something new to do locally then why not check out some of my previous Yorkshire related blog posts below:
Chamas vs Estabulo | comparing Rodizio Bar & Grill’s in Beverley
A-Z of free or cheap things to do in Yorkshire
Caio Chicchetti Italian Restaurant review
Wingfield Farm Hessle – a British family pub
Rock Up Hull adventure & review
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