Bella Italia

Rather generic Italian. Service was poor and food was average. I ordered cheese bread appetizer and the dipping sauce was tasty but the bread was bland! Chicken cacciatore was chicken cooked in tomato sauce– not ‘like my mama made’, as they like to advertise!

Came to this specific restaurant during my first visit to London in 2011. Yes its a chain, but its good! Its not pricey and you can get decent pizza there. We usually get pizzas and share a salad and wine. Ive been back to various ones now and I like this place.

Shopping, shopping and more shopping– builds up an appetite.
This cute little italian restaurant is a perfect place to sit, relax and enjoy some nice Italian food.
This Italian chain offers great pizzas, pastas and kids meals. Meatballs hmmmm so tasty.

Excellent filling Italian food. Great soups also. Just had a vegetarian Calzione and trust me I could finish it only because I shared it. The prices may seem a bit on the high side, but for the quantity they serve, I feel it is completely reasonable.
Waiters were also very nice and friendly, gave us a very warm service.

I dined at this location twice while visiting London. I must maintain a gluten free diet, and I found this place to be very accommodating. The wait staff were knowledgeable about the gluten free offerings. I had the pasta once and thought it was tasty. I like a thin-​crust pizza, and Bella Vita’s pizza crust is very thin! Not my favorite GF pizza in the world, but it was wonderful to have a safe and affordable option while traveling. I would gladly visit if I’m ever back in London.

Bella Italia never fail to deliver on service and delicious food. If you love Italian food, you’ll love Bella.
This branch is quite small and can get very full and feel a bit cramped at peak times.
Asides from that, this is a lovely, centrally located branch, not even a 5 minute walk from Leicester Square station, so widely accessible.

It’s hard to believe that in a vibrant city like London and in a great location like Covent garden, this chain of restaurants manage to still make it despite of the horrendous food and extremely poor service. I would advice anyone to avoid it, there are plenty of better budget restaurants in London town, strada would be an option or even pizza express.

looking around for dinner on a chilly, drizzly night, I passed Bella Italia and thought how adorable and inviting it looked and felt sad that I wouldn’t be able to eat there. BUT! then I glanced at the menu and saw the magic words — gluten-​free pasta AND pizza available.
the restaurant (upstairs anyway) is tiny, cozy and romantic/​casual. my server was very pleasant and helpful. ask for their gluten-​free menu. I got the GF pizza, which was loaded with delish roasted veggies. the crust is very thin, almost like a cracker, but so tasty, and the sauce and toppings were perfect. there’s even a flourless chocolate cake for dessert which was way too rich for me, but I enjoyed giving it a try. really great food and atmosphere, definitely recommended.

Four of us were in Leicester Square on New Years Eve loking for somewhere to eat. Boy were we glad we found Bella Italia ’round the corner. Although very busy the atmosphere was great and the food was serve in a friendly [authentic Italian?] and timely manner. As a bonus the food and wine were excellent and the prices reasonable. We’ll be back!

There’s no need really to tell you what kind of food is served at Bella Italia. Being part of a chain, I believe, has lead to hinder it’s potential as a restaurant, although it does have some rewarding beneficiaries. Decked out in seemingly (because I’m no authority on the matter) authentic and warm Italian furnishings and interior design, this is a small little restaurant that could be a nice breath of fresh air in comparison to the other more stressful places in Central London. Admittedly however, I did find it a little claustrophobic.
The food here is an (albeit slight) cut above the rest of the Italian restaurants that you’ll find in this price range. I went for a simple pasta dish and, being a food geek, was quite disappointed to see that they hadn’t paired up the right kind of pasta (in this case Linguini) with the right kind of sauce (Salsa Di Pomodoro). This definitely made me question the authenticity of the place, but then again it did taste alright and was pretty cheap as well.
Other options on the menu were seemingly a little too «commercial» for my liking. There’s the Burger Italiano, or the Polo Milanese (breaded chicken on spaghetti Napoli, which to be honest sounds a little beige), although the pizza did look quite appetising; if you’re with a crowd of fussy eaters (which I would hope you’re not) then Bella Italia will probably do the trick.
If you plan on going, be prepared to wait in a cue for a little while. It’s also worth bearing in mind that – in addition to the «authentic vibe” – the service is somewhat fiery, but what can you expect, you are eating Italian after all.

On my recent trip to London we had to find somewhere to eat on the Saturday night. We decided to go to Bella Italia as there are quite a few in London and it was great that there were quite a few right by our hotel. What I found is that there is a nice atmosphere but the food I am still not sure about. It seems like we had two ok meals and then one very bad one so let me tell you why.
What impressed me most about Bella Italia is that they are in so many good locations that you should be able to find one near to you or near to where you want to go. The one we went to in London was close to Covent Garden and it is a small restaurant which had the Bella Italia logo outside and then seating upstairs and down. It was decorated with brown walls and accessories and had some very interesting pictures to look at around the eating areas.
When you walk in the upstairs is quite small and there is a bar there and then downstairs has more seats and another bar. The seats are quite close together so the whole place feels very cosy and has a nice atmosphere with very low music in the background which is nice because you can talk to each other properly.
So the most important thing is the menu and they had a great choice of meat dishes, vegetarian dishes, pastas and pizzas and at very reasonable prices. The pizza I had was a margarita but then I had red onion put on it which was lovely and that was about £8 and it was huge. My fiancé had lasagna which was about £9 which was also quite big but he did have some garlic breads to go with it.
My mom and dad had a chicken dish which was £12 and looked lovely and then my sister had pizza with me. They have great choices though and especially because with some of them you can customize such as the pizza and then they have sides such as garlic bread and chips at about £3 each and they are big portions. For starters they have shared platters and such starting at about £4 each but we didn’t have any.
We also didn’t have any puddings but they had some great choices with cheese cake and then waffles which I was tempted with but was just too full by this point.
So why didn’t I like the meals. Well to be honest with you the chicken dishes looked great and so did the pizzas when they first came out but they were burnt down one side so obviously not put right into the oven correctly. They also tasted very rubbery and they did not put much red onion on my pizza and I actually counted eleven pieces which as you can imagine for a big pizza is nothing.
What really made me mad though was the lasagna. It was warm around the outside which is what my fiancé eats first and then when he got to the middle it was freezing cold. We actually couldn’t get a member of staffs attention and after fifteen minutes we gave up. It had obviously been put in the microwave or oven on the wrong heat but how vile as literally half the lasagna couldn’t be eaten.
I also was not much for the staff in this Bella Italia as it seems that smiling was completely off the menu. I know they were busy but they were lacking the basic customer service skills!
We paid for our meal using Tesco vouchers which was good as all we had to pay for were the drinks. A wine was about £4, a lemonade was £2.50 and my pineapple juice was around £2 so not badly priced at all.
So would I recommend Bella Italia? Based on this single experience I would say no but to be honest I have been to other ones so maybe this was just a bad night for them. The atmosphere is nice and there is a good choice on the menu but the food is not that amazing but it is ok.
I am going to give Bella Italia two stars as it’s a shame but I do think we had some bad luck and cold food when it is supposed to be hot is just disgusting.
Thanks for reading.
xxx
P. S. This has been posted on other sites but always by me katygriff

Bella Italia has always been a favourite of mine and by many apparently as whenever I go in there always appears to be a queue. The pasta and pizza dishes that they serve are a must for anyone wondering what to order. My favourite thing about the restaurant is the warm and friendly atmosphere that the restaurant has. The pictures that hang on the walls, the bar and even the tables all reflect the Italian theme. The food is simply exquisite and I have yet to meet anyone to take a dislike to this. I would recommend booking however and asking for a table upstairs as I find downstairs quite dark.

Reasonably priced food (for London), especially when you use Tesco vouchers! Not the best Italian food I’ve eaten but not objectionable. Quite friendly staff & it does get very busy.
Would return — if they still take tesco vouchers!

This restaurant is a very nice, reasonable place ot eat in london. We walked over from the embankment after going on the london eye and had a bit of difficulty finding it. it was off a side street and no one seemed to know where! There was seating on one level and then down some steep narrow stairs to the lower underground seating where we were. It was busy and there was a queue outside — so i would def recommend booking — even though we ate at 6pm