Bella Italia Review

Bella Italia is now open at Middleway Retail and Leisure Park, Burton-upon-Trent. They are surrounded by a cinema, fitness club/sports shop, big clothing brands and many other retailers. You also get up to 4 hours of free parking if you dine at Bella Italia. This £800k restaurant created over 30 new jobs in the area and is now serving up fun, generous, high value, quality Italian dining, 7 days a week from 9am until 11pm.

Bella Italia is known and loved around the UK as the High Street’s friendly, local bistro where carefully sourced, authentic Italian ingredients mean that food is brimming with flavour yet affordable – warm welcomes and perfect pastas await.

The restaurant is serving a brand new menu. Executive Chef, Vittorio Lettieri and the Bella team have curated some of the most famous and fabulous Italian ingredients sourced from across all of Italy to ensure every dish oozes real Italian authenticity from first mouthful to last morsel.

The new menu features:

• Two different Antipasto boards; one with light and herby meats sourced from the north of Italy with deep flavourful salami sourced from Calabria in the south.
• Bella Italia’s new ‘Ripiena’ (Italian for ‘filled’) pizza, has a crust oozing real mozzarella and garlic butter.
• Cute Heart-Shaped Pasta Parcels with four cheeses in a basil pesto sauce and topped with semi-dried Pachino tomatoes.
• A slow-cooked and succulent Lamb Shank in a garlic, red wine & rosemary sauce, served with mashed potatoes and green beans.
• The truly indulgent Limoncello Meringue Pie and, of course, Bella’s hallmark fabulous and amazing Gelato in loads of flavours.

This was our first time visiting Bella with kids and the atmosphere was very fun and exciting. When we arrived, both children were given an activity sheet and multicolour colouring pen to do. We were sat at a corner of a comfortable cosy table where there were wall plugs for customers to plug in their USB cable to charge their devices. I love this idea especially as we both love using our phone and sometime we do need a quick boost to charge our phone/tablet! Later, we were all served with drinks. Mr C went for a pint of Menabrea while we all opted for Diet Coke! This was Mr C’s first time trying out Menabrea lager and he loved it!

As for starters, both children went for garlic bread while I went for Tempura Prawns (new in menu) and Mr C went for Whitebait. They were all beautifully cooked, well presented and tasted great. We finished it all in no time. The prawns tasted fresh and succulent and the whitebait were really crispy. We also had the mixed olives with seeds.

Their kids menu comes with two different portions of food. The Piccolo menu is suitable for aged 2 to 6 where the portion is about ½ of an adult portion whilst the Grande menu is suitable for aged 7 to 11 where the portion is about ¾ of an adult portion. Mr K went for the Ribs n Chips and Ms C went for pizza dog. The menu is unique and interesting.

The Ribs n Chips were well cooked with half a rack of meaty ribs, chunky fries served with onion rings and BBQ sauce. The ribs were packed full of flavour and Mr K enjoyed them very much.

Ms C had the pizza dog which is a tasty hot dog with mozzarella and tomato sauce baked in pizza dough, served with chunky fries, superstar stick and tomato ketchup. It was an interesting dish and Ms C loved the hot dog and managed to finish it all.

Mr C had the slow-cooked lamb shank in a garlic, red wine & rosemary sauce, served with mashed potatoes and green beans. This was cooked perfectly with beautifully tender lamb in a really tasty and the mash was soft and buttery too.

I had the Pork Saltimbocca which is the pork fillet, crispy Speck ham and sage, served with mashed potatoes, fresh green beans and topped with thyme. It is very well seasoned and the pork was very tender. It was very well presented and great value for money.

As for desserts, we were all quite full from the prior courses so we all went for their amazing Gelato instead of their cakes/pie. The lovely waitress bought Mr K to pick his own Gelato at their Gelato stall. The stall was filled with lots of different toppings for them to pick from popcorn to waffle, crushed cones to smarties and many more. He loved the stall and it was a great unique experience for him. Normally we don’t get to see the ice cream stall and they have a well decorated area for children to pick their own desserts!

Overall, it was a truly great experience. Their food and services were great and it was all set in a lovely welcoming atmosphere. We loved the food and would highly recommend a visit if you’ve never been before.

Disclosure: We were invited to try out their food and drinks. However, they have not paid me for this review, and they do not exercise any editorial control over my review or anything else on this site.