Zenzero

Zenzero doesn’t sound like it should be an upmarket Italian restaurant. I’m not totally sure what it sounds like it should be really, perhaps some kind of feng shui shop, but I don’t think you can actually sell feng shui.
Anyway, name issues aside, Zenzero is a nice enough place to eat in Formby, offering Italian cuisine that’s a bit more sophisticated than the usual pizza and pasta combos on offer elsewhere. Whilst they do offer pizza and pasta dishes, they also offer selections of antipasto, luxury steaks and scallops.
Their prices aren’t too bad for what you’re getting but, as Matt says, the restaurant just doesn’t have a particularly friendly or warm atmosphere. Perhaps it’s because of the sheer quality of nearby Don Luigi’s that Zenzero receives such indifference from me but I guess I just know that there’s better places to eat than here.
I’d recommend the food, but not really the dining experience itself as a whole.

Zenzero is another Italian restaurant in a sea of Italian restaurants. It’s difficult to imagine what happened before Italian restaurants came along and conquered the dining-​out market — Times restaurant critic Giles Coren calls this primordial era ‘BP’, that is ‘Before Pizza’.
Well, Zenzero may be an Italian restaurant but it’s not really a pizza ‘n’ pasta place — we’re talking instead antipastos of cured meats and marinated vegetables, scallops in champagne and saffron, fillet steak with Parma ham and Madeira sauce. It’s all of an excellent standard, and not even all that expensive (with the fillet steak priced under £16). This is a real restaurant and clearly the chefs and management take it all very seriously which is all very admirable.
My only real problem with the place is the lack of soul; it’s a bit sleek and a bit cold. The staff were friendly enough but there was never the sort of pleasant hustle and bustle, the warm feeling that comes with visiting a really welcoming eatery. Maybe I’m just after something that Zenzero was not intended to supply but restaurants should be about more than food and drink.