Al Cristallo in Blackburn with Darwen

Visited as a group of 10 tonight whilst staying at the Premier Inn next door. The food was fantastic and the staff and owner very friendly. There was a loud table near us and the owner dealt with it admirably and couldn’t apologise enough - a great evening and would definitely recommend a visit !

impromtu lunch visit with 9 colleagues turned out to be not only excellent value but surprisngly good quality, very friendly prompt service in a clean welcoming environment. New staff, new menu and in my opinion well worth a visit.

I visit the place food was greate, wonderful service. I’ll be back soon. Thank you so much to al cristallo staff

I have eaten at Al Cristallo three times since they reopened and each time I've enjoyed. The food is fresh and cooked to order, no more microwave meals! The staff are attentive and friendly. The Lunch time menu deal for £5.90 is amazing value considering the sizes of the dishes! Pre booking tables and food orders for large parties needs to be taken into consideration as the food takes time to prepare... it's not fast food. Thank you Al Cristallo, I'll be back.

Four of us enjoyed our meals, but the service appeared chaotic ... we arrived 17:15hrs, there was no greeting at the door, no one to ask if we had booked a table (which we had). Eventually we sought out a waitress and were shown to our table. Service started out well, orders taken and food delivered in a relatively timely manner; lacking on the marie rose sauce, but additional sauce requested and given. Once mains were finished we were pretty much abandoned with the table half cleared. By now it was 19:33hrs and we had an appointment at 20:00hrs. Coffees arrived, bill requested ... a further wait! Bill eventually arrived, we had to pay at the bar as we were in a hurry. However, tables around us were complaining about the wait, the food to the point that 2 tables we were aware of, walked out without paying! We then heard that the kitchen staff were refusing to cook any more food, but this was third hand information. We had no complaints about our food, the 'average' rating relates to the fact we were in there for almost 3 hours and the apparent chaos all around us. Actually quite surreal. In fairness I had heard other very positive reports of the restaurant, hence our visit. Would need to be convinced to visit again.

Food was great apart from the exception of the ricotta spinach pancakes, which were burnt. Sent them back only to have a replacement dish which appeared to have been cooked in the same dish as the previous one. Although the second version was edible it had the fragrant taste of the previous dish. Would suggest the chefs use different cooking pots when making a replacement dish. It also would have been nice to either have had the offer of complimentary drinks or a discount to make up for the inconvenience however this disappointingly never happened. All other meals were fine, highly recommend the cheesy garlic bread, pizzas, fishcake starters and deserts.