Avista at the Millenium Hotel

Very fair place, as all restaurants in hotelAvista is a great food and chef but the overall experience is ok!
Food is particulary good, Michele is a great chef and if he is around call him to the table and ask him to prepare something special, he is very good in sea food … enjoy it…

Despite being completely empty the atmosphere was very bleak, morbid and the lighting was terrible. Bright spotlights and tacky colourful glasses on the table were not impressive at all. Even the wine glasses where something you purchase from Ikea with no elegance whatsoever.

The table grissini were slightly stale and the expensive wine even tasted rather bitter. My crab avocado salad to start was fine. But my prawns & pea tortelloni was extremely disappointing even after I added salt & pepper – a brutal sin when dining in these types of restaurants.

No warm energy or exciting dishes to come back for, we immediately left after 1 hr of the fastest dining I have ever experienced.

I had an excellent business lunch at Avista. The restaurant was quite quiet on a Monday and this coupled with its well spaced tables ensured discretion. The décor is quite simple, but modern and fashionable. It’s not particularly memorable but you would have no objections to it and doesn’t look too hotel.

The real star here is the food. It’s a long menu, covering three pages of A4 not including desserts so everyone is catered for. I ordered quite simply, with Bresola, goats cheese and walnuts to start, followed by Chicken Milanese with tomato and rockets salad. They were both the best things I had eaten in weeks, bursting with flavour and a real feeling of freshness. This feels like a restaurant where the chef knows how to do things well and to really focus on well-loved flavours without over-complicating things.

Service was friendly and fast. We were out rather promptly which was ideal for a business lunch. Its not that cheap and we escaped for £130 for three people with two glasses of wines, two courses and coffees.

Overall, definitely worth a trip and a good spot for business lunches. I really look forward to my next visit.

My wife and I had a beautiful dinner at Avista last Saturday. The receptionist was welcoming and we felt immediately comfortable. The menu proposes a good and wide variety of dishes. The extensive and well structured wine list covers all Italian regions and also gives some space for wines from all around the world. We had a beautiful crab a salad and aubergine parmigiana to start with. Delicious! As a main course we followed the recommendation of the smiling and professional waiter. That was a sea-bream which was boned out at our table. The quality of the food was excellent and the bill came at £ 80.43 including service charge and a bottle of pinot grigio from Castello Banfi. We both believe it was a great value for money. Furthermore both manager and chef came to our table to say hello and to make sure we were satisfied. It is absolutely a great place to spend some time for an enjoyable dinner. I would recommend this restaurant to anybody who appreciates real Italian food and ambience.

We booked a business dinner at Avista but would never do so again. The restaurant was so loud it was difficult to hear each other. We were encouraged to take the tasting menu, which started out fine with 4 or 5 starters to ‘taste’, however it went rapidly downhill after that. We waited an hour or so between each course and had to flag down the waiter each time to ask if the kitchen had forgotten us. We live in Europe and are used to leisurely meals, but this was ridiculous! The pasta course was greatly diminished with only two pastas to taste and the main course again had only two (beef and fish). Each course featured a wait of at least an hour between, and us trying to keep things moving along. Finally, the dessert course offered three puddings – and I don't mean puddings the way Brits use the word – where it could mean almost anything. No, these were actual gelatinous puddings. And that's all! The typical hour+ wait for a pre-made dessert! 50 GBP per person and no wine included! Total elapsed time – over 4 hours! Stay Away!