Chains changed: Zizzi reshape reshaped garlic bread

Having moaned about the apparent sleight-of-hand used by Zizzi in placing their garlic bread with cheese on a piece of wood and shrinking the size, it's good to report that (perhaps because they realised their customers aren't that stupid) they've gone back to giving a proper sized bread on top of the wood.

The new menu is now in place - not very much interesting in terms of new items, although if it's true that they've introduced calamari because of "popular demand", then someone's going to be happy. Not the squid, though.

Chains changed: Zizzi prepare Spring 2009 menu

Dropped by Zizzi yesterday, and caught them in the shift from the Winter to Spring menus.

The most obvious sign of this was the brutalisation of the mighty garlic cheese bread with caramalised onion. Hitherto, this has arrived on a plate, the size of a pizza.

Yesterday - although the new menu hasn't even started yet - it came out on a rectangular piece of wood, ready cut and assembled in a pile. Now, there are two possible reasons for this.

One might be that Zizzi has decided it's an exciting and attractive new way of presenting the dish.

The other, would be that Zizzi have realised you might not notice that the pizza bread has shrunk in size, but not in price if it comes in a different shape.

Number two would be the winner.

They've also added rosemary to the recipe, which adds nothing in terms of flavour. Well, actually, it adds a lot in terms of flavour, but nothing that sits well with the onions.

The staff told us that the pizzas are going to be presented in this manner, too, when the new menu kicks in. I don't know what the cost of equipping the chain with these new wooden platters would be, but presumably the savings made by shrinking the portions will help pay for that?