User reviews:

Posted by: lory june julio on 20 Oct ' 12 at 07:03

applicant for chef,can work immeadiately

Posted by: Steve Trubshaw on 04 Nov ' 11 at 17:03

YET ANOTHER BORING ITALIAN RESTAURANT

Old Town has lacked a decent pizza restaurant for years – Marzano do superb pizzas for delivery but the location lets it down and sometimes you fancy a sit down meal and don’t want to trek over to Dubai Mall. There really has been nowhere to date. So... when 800Pizza opened we gave it a try.

Oh dear. 800Pizza as the name suggests deliver pizzas too and the back of the restaurant is a bit of a disgrace to be honest – there were 6 delivery boys sitting around a table outside smoking and one charming individual clearing his sinuses and spitting who positively glared at us when we entered the restaurant via the back terrace. There were also bins and mops strewn about and all in all no effort has been made to prettify the area which is poor really as it is the first thing you see if you come through Old Town from the Dubai Mall end.

We were seated and had a chance to look around – the décor is so unimaginative, so clichéd, so faux Italiano and I’ve seen it in any number of cheap Italian eateries over the years. Thing is Italian restaurants rarely excel on the décor but create atmosphere through their serving staff – good Italian waiters are the best there are in my opinion, but unfortunately 800Pizza is staffed but quiet charisma-less Filipinos who hang around and don’t really make you feel either welcome or unwelcome. So we’re struggling on atmosphere to start with but what really killed it for me was the hideous tinkly Italiano music (Justa One Cornetto, Volare, a bit of Nessun Doma etc..) which to be honest is incredibly annoying once you’ve gone round the cycle once (silence sometimes is honestly golden). But above all, we noticed that we were the only diners outnumbered by the staff about 5:1 but we stayed despite obvious reservations.

Not a great start and as for the food, despite the audacious claims on the website and menu that would make you think the place was run by Heston Blumenthal, the pizza is standard fare. Sorry but it's about as authentically Italian as Filipino chefs and waiters called Paolo can be! All in all this place is Italian in the way the cast of Jersey Shore claim to be Italian.

Sorry to be so hard but seriously why can’t anyone open a decent restaurant that takes pizza and Italian food a little more seriously rather than following every cliché in the book. 800Pizza aren’t the only guilty party in Dubai by far but there is nothing else about the place to redeem it.