Sequels are rarely as good as the original. We were on our way back from a reminder of that (Gladiator II) when we decided to give Franco Manca Richmond a whirl after our surprisingly good experience in Putney last week. So starts my first Richmond restaurant review…

We had a couple of rewards to redeem, and it seemed like a good way to round off a Sunday night.

This branch used to be a Police Station, and the atmosphere is about was welcoming now as it was then. We were dismissively waved to our table, and then left there. The number of staff was not overly dissimilar to the number of tables, and yet they all seemed busy doing something, anything, rather than take an order. The manager was a particularly ethereal presence, appearing and disappearing from the main floor of the restaurant.

As I said, we had some rewards: a free pizza and a free drink. Sadly, nowhere does the app or the Franco Manca website tell you what constitutes a “drink”. And that lack of knowledge extends to the staff as well. The person who came to take a drinks order spent 10 minutes finding someone who did know (house red or house white was what we were offered – Not the rose, which seems odd. I didn’t even want to ask about beer and soft drinks!). Worse, even the app couldn’t work it out, so while we were able to redeem the free pizza, the app resolutely refused to redeem the free drinks order. Not life-threatening, but if you are going to force customers to use your app to do everything, making sure that a) it explains itself, and b) it works, are minimum requirements.

On the surface (literally), the pizzas look good. But they were both on the slightly damp and undercooked side of “soft”. Sure, Neapolitan-style pizzas are not supposed to be crispy, but they are supposed to be cooked through. Each could both have done with a little longer in the oven, or possibly, the floor of the oven is not quite hot enough (it should be over 400°C), which is why the pizzas were only superficially done.

You may ask why I keep coming back. Well, this time round, it cost us £30 for three drinks and two pizzas (we did get a free glass of wine, manually deducted from the bill), which was a steal, and every time we hope the Franco Fairy has been and waved a magic wand to return the chain to its glory days.

Better staff training, and more of an emphasis on actually cooking the pizza could transform things. Yesterday, there were thousands of rugby fans pouring through Richmond from Twickenham Stadium. One or two stopped at Franco Manca, but most of them seemed to go elsewhere: It should have been heaving.

Rating: 3.5/5 (mainly for the value)

Franco Manca Richmond: https://www.francomanca.co.uk/restaurants/richmond/