Elysium

This is a fine dining Italian restaurant, and it shows with it’s good food and fantastic interior.
I used a voucher having seen them on numerous occasions, so I finally decided to try this place and purchased a starter and steak meal, with a side each and wine for 2 people for only £29! Now some things, you think «it’s too good to be true», but in this case, the food was excellent!
We went during the week at lunch time, and it was fairly quiet so we had the pick of seats.
Although the wine was included in our deal, we decided to order Fanta to drink. Now they didn’t have Fanta, so the waiter decided to concoction his own version. Fair play to him for trying to please the customer, and what came to our table was fizzy water with orange flavouring. It was ok!
For starters we had the «Spicy king prawns with garlic butter and white wine sauce served with bread» and «Crispy salt and pepper calamari served with garlic lemon and herb mayonnaise», which were both very nice starters, but as you would expect, portions were on the smaller side, but still very enjoyable.
For main course we both had the fillet steak (medium rare), with the «Roasted new potatoes with rosemary and sea salt». The steak was really well cooked and the roasted potatoes were abit bland, and couldn’t taste the rosemary, but the steak was more than enough the attention grabber.
The service was good, and the waiter ensured we had a good experience, but without being too in your face so to speak.
Elysium is well worth a visit if you fancy something more up class and you want to pay for it, but then again, there are always vouchers to be used!

I want to be fair with this review so I’ll start with the positive. Not normally a fan of Italian cooking I was delighted with the food at Elysium. The calamari starter, although rather a small portion, was crisp and fresh. The pizzas were authentic thin, crispy and stone baked with quality toppings and the calzone was generous and suitably ‘squidgy’. All but one of the staff were friendly and approachable and the manager was a delight.
Elysium loses one star for just one waitress in particular. Just the one but it goes to show how one person giving a poor impression can so seriously affect the dining experience. She huffed, she snarled, she plonked things down on the table and walked off without a word, she quibbled at us as if we were an irritation getting in the way of her life. We were merely 3 mates out for a quick pizza, quite what offended her I cannot say but we were not welcome. Having worked in this industry for so long I can genuinely say it was the worst service I’ve had. I’ve seen mistakes, I’ve seen distraction and I’ve seen cackhanded incompetence that happens to us all from time to time… and these are nothing if handled with a smile and some genuine warmth.
Having finished our meal and asked for two bills (more huffs and quibbling) our change was slammed on the table and this little treasure stomped away. Not even a goodnight or please come again. Nope. A quite literal I am done with you now get out.
I decided to tell the manager– the food was delicious and all but this one person was bringing the place down. He was surprised and genuinely apologetic, his response is the reason I would go again. His waitress is the reason I wouldn’t have, had I not talked to him. She may well be ‘studying the law’ and normally fine but she will lose you customers and that will lose you money… she needs re-​training in basic manners and she needs it now.
Now to the reason for three stars. Two of our party were having a Groupon deal and although the food really really was very good we felt throughout that we were singled out as ‘Groupies’ and that took the shine off. The glasses of wine we had paid for in the deal were half of a 125ml glass, so that felt like false advertising. The 2 for 1 for the main was fantastic but the overall atmosphere was quite a lot ‘Oh, you have a voucher.‘
Groupon is the perfect way to impress new clientele. Yes you lose a little from giving a deal but it’s a chance to tempt in someone who may otherwise not come along, surely it makes more business sense to sweep them off their feet?
This was the 2^nd Groupon I’d had last week and if you read my review for Brasserie Forty 4 you can see how it should be done– I don’t use Groupon because I’m ‘cheap’ I use it to try new places. Brasserie Forty 4 spun me around, showed me all the sights and won my repeat business not just for the immediate future but the long term too. I will eat there, I will take my friends there and I will recommend it to everyone. I will recommend the pizza at Elysium but the experience was just not comparable.
In conclusion then, if you are a pizza fan and want delicious/​crispy/​authentic fare then Elysium is very well worth a visit, if you are using a Groupon deal I couldn’t in good heart recommend it.

I’m still recovering from the size of the pizza I had last night at Elysium.
*burps slightly before continuing*
I’m also going to clarify something very quickly before continuing the review. The four star rating I’ve given the establishment is based on the quality of the food I had (which was truly excellent — and of all the main world foods you tend to encounter in restaurants. Indian, Italian, Chinese, Welsh etc — Italian is probably my least favourite). The surroundings are a little too upmarket, modern, brash and bright for my personal tastes (I like restaurants to be similar to the sort of pubs I prefer. slightly run down, with low lighting, where you can really relax and unwind and enjoy your food /​drink /​convivial conversation).
But the place is clean, friendly and not extortionately over priced (£16.90 for a calamari starter and a frankly garlic laden (noms enthusiastically), gargantuan calzone the size of Birmingham, Dudley, Solihull and Wolverhampton* combined) so food wise it’s excellent.
The toilets were rather cold though. It may seems trivial, but this is quite an important thing to me!
There’s also a piano — which, whilst being quite a pleasant addition in many ways also allows former jazz students to inflict their overly noodly, Americanised vocal renditions of various Elton John classics on your wincing ears whilst trying to eat. Or maybe I’m just annoyed because he was a much better pianist than myself.
There’s a little of both in there, I’ll be honest :)
Just you wait until they hear my piano rendition of «It’s A Sin» by the Pet Shop Boys. ;)
The staff are generally very friendly and helpful — one of the waitresses we had seemed to be in a bit of a mood at the time, which was rather irritating, but none of my party thought that this was any reflection on the restaurant as a whole. The management took our concerns about the waitress’s surly attitude seriously and assured us that this was usually not the case.
I’d recommend Elysium for a meal, but on a personal level I found it a little too sterile (in terms of the décor /​brightness) and therefore wouldn’t suggest it as somewhere to really relax and unwind whilst enjoying your (and let’s be honest here) excellent, reasonably priced pizza etc.
*That would be the West Midlands conurbation then. It’s not just a review, it’s a geography lesson as well. ;)