ASK Italian in Chelmsford

Nice ambience. Quick service. Food was alright. I had food from vegan menu. It was nice to see the vegan menu available. Overall, a good place to go for a meal or drinks.

Busy Saturday evening - staff were struggling to cope with the volume of guests and take-aways. One starter didn't seem to have been prepared correctly - we were told the menu had changed since our last visit two weeks earlier! All else was fine and good standard.

Very unlike me to have a moan about something & particularly to post a bad review, but this ASK was genuinely terrible. Went on Saturday 21st May, had a table booked for 18:45. Was told it was 30 mins for the food to come out, no issue at all with that . Had a friendly guy come over & take our drinks order. We ended up leaving after 1hr 15 mins at 20:00 as there wasn’t any sight of our food & not one member of staff bothered to keep us updated. I’m not a food genius but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take over an hour to cook some prawns & toast some bread. Don’t know what was going on in the kitchen but there was two of the chefs having a row - once again can understand we all have a row at work, but an open kitchen when everything is going wrong, it probably ain’t the best image.Would highly recommend customers not to go & highly recommend management to take a serious look at this branch, it’s a shambles.

Had a buyagift deal for a 3 course meal for 2 and it was a good choice of courses from a set menu. Did allow us to choose off main menu as some items not available which was great for variety. Staff were lovely, place was clean and had a nice vibe 👌

I've been to Ask at Chelmsford many times, but the last two times I've been I've thought it was awful. Completely overpriced food for what it is: essentially an upmarket microwave meal. Service is fine, but I'm not going for the service I'm going for the food. We paid using Tesco vouchers so thankfully not £60 out of pocket, although those vouchers could've been used better elsewhere. Disappointed and definitely won't be back.

We decided to sit outside as it was a lovely day, Sunday lunchtime, others also chose this option. We sat down and almost straight away were asked for our drink order. Which we gave the, who I assume, shift manager as she wasn't in uniform. We looked at the menu and decided our starters and mains as we were hungry and wanted to save time. About 20 minutes later she came back with our drinks. I assumed it was busy inside as it was a nice day. That's why the drinks took so long. Same woman took our order for both starters and mains and disappeared again. In the meantime, the waitress arrived to see if we'd like any drinks. 🤷🏻‍♀️ As we were waiting for our starters I went inside to use the toilet and realised there were only 6 tables taken up. I walked past the kitchen and food was there ready to be taken to tables. Sadly, when I exited the toilet. The same food was still there waiting. Not a great sign. As I sat down our waitress came back and told us they were out of Kenwee. I stopped for a beat and realised she meant Quinoa. As there wasn't many vegetarian options I suggested maybe New potatoes as a replacement. We waited yet another 20 or so minutes and our starters came. One was dry and stuck to the plate, unsurprisingly. She informed me then that the Chef pulled a face and said "POTATOES!?" It wasn't that strange. All the other elements were salad like. Finally! Our starters. No cutlery. I flagged another waitress down and got some. We pretty much inhaled them as we were starving by this time. I also asked her if I could get a cappuccino. Once cleared, the waitress said she'd now put our mains through. We waited again. 25-30 mins again, not in the best of moods as we couldn't understand what was taking everything so long. They weren't exactly busy. Still no Cappucinno. Then our original waitress came out and said "We're just putting your mains on now!" Huh? Me and my husband were shocked. How were they JUST going on now!? Half an hour after the starters were cleared!? We'd had enough by this point. We were hungry and peeved. It had been a busy morning and we were trying to enjoy a lunch date together. We'd had enough, so my husband went inside to cancel our food. Their only saving grace that day was that they wiped the drinks and starters clear. We then went to Costas where I had a very nice pot of pasta and a CAPPUCINNO! Took about 5mins. We arrived at ASK Italian at 12.45 and left at 2.20. Ridiculous. I've worked in the Hospitality industry for 20 years. I know how to run a restaurant/bar/pub. I don't know what's wrong there, whether it's management or the company. But something is a miss. That's the third and probably the last time we'll go. First time they'd only been open a few weeks. So I put the terrible waiting times down to that. The second time we went, the only saving grace was a lovely waitress, and it was our first time in two years of eating out due to the pandemic. The third time, well. Who knows what the multiple issues were that day. Such a shame. It has a lot of potential otherwise.

Food was pretty decent, service though was really poor. Order on phone which was rather painful. Waitress left mid service and essentially that was the end of that. Waiter came over 20mins or so after we had finished and asked if he could take plates. Took one and then didn't return, waited ten mins before clearing g the table myself, waiter explained he thought we was still eating.Deserts which were ordered at the start via the app then didn't appear and the waiter came over asking if we want desert.. yes please, we will have the ones we have already paid for pleaseFood was good and deserts nice but wouldn't return based off the service. Cannot even rational it due to being very busy, there was only us in the place and then one more couple arrived after we had finished the food. Disappointing overall

Second time here and the service was just shockingly slow again, our waitress was nice enough but her pace needed to be faster also she didn't tell my husband there was no rigatoni so his main came with a totally different pasta but he didn't get told that in advance rigatoni was unavailable which isn't very good, my carbonara was really bland, the pancetta was burnt and there was just no taste, no salt no garlic nothing... My niece had the kids version and hers was also disappointingly bland, my brownie dessert should not be warmed in that black ceramic pan, it was brunt all at the bottom I had to scoop it out onto a plate, also putting paper napkins under a ridiculously hot pan isn't exactly the best idea the tissue was all burnt.Pretty poor food to be honest and I don't think we'll go back again unless we use the taste card even then I don't think it's worth the price. Save your pennies and go to Zizi or Prezzo the food is much better and the service.

Went out for dinner with a friend on Tuesday Our waiter Liam was lovely! Quite busy, but the food and services was perfect :) only managed to take a photo of the starter demolished the pizza before but was so delicious!!!

Went back today and had much better service. Chips were amazing. Had a nice mushroom & truffle calzone. Unfortunately my partners pizza came with the mushrooms we'd asked to leave off but they dealt with it well and bought a new pizza out within 5 minutes. Good service.We hoped to have a starter and main for lunch today. Starter came out promptly and was pretty good. However after waiting 40 minutes with our starter plates still on the table we felt we'd been forgotten about. We asked a male waiter about our main but he didn't come back to us. After a a few more minutes we went inside to find out what was happening and received an apology. I believe the mains hadn't been ordered. I'm not sure why this was but we didn't have time to wait any longer. They adjusted the bill for us which was a nice goodwill gesture and were very apologetic.