New Year’s Healthy Menu at Zizzi

‘Tis the season to be skinny. Or at least to digest something sensible after a staggeringly calorific and sedentary December. The new healthy menu at High-Street presence, Zizzi, suggests some healthy choices made from the basic ingredients of Italian cuisine, and promises not to disappoint your taste buds.

We often turn our noses up at chain restaurants, deeming them tolerable only for visiting bumpkin relatives who want to eat somewhere endorsed by strings of nationwide, identical contemporaries. What we frequently neglect to realise is that some chains are actually pretty good, and Zizzi is one of them. Let’s not deny that there are some pretty indulgent dishes on their standard menu, which may be hard to ignore. But with this new healthy three-course menu, should you be saintly enough to choose it, there is no punitive compromise on taste.

The menu is certainly short and sweet: three starters, three mains and one dessert option, and no whisper of meat or fish, which might be a little off-putting for some. The traditional tomato bruschetta consists of sweet santos tomatoes on altamura bread, seasoned with basil and a luxurious drizzle of olive oil, and the two lighter starters are a simple fresh leaf salad enlivened with parmesan and rocket, and a mushroom soup.

A bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce makes up the first main dish, comforting, and devoid of pretension, whereas the no-cream mushroom risotto includes firm Arborio rice, richly flavoured wild mushrooms and a strong accent of fresh rosemary. These warming mains are a most welcome salve against the attacks of the current weather, but won’t weigh you down, and there is also a salad option with buffalo milk mozzarella for the unflinchingly virtuous.

You can’t really go wrong with a sorbet to round off a meal, and the mango and blackcurrant dessert options are palate-cleansing and light, leaving you feeling smug, spritely and optimistic for a nap-free afternoon back at the office. At under a tenner for the set menu, and less than seven quid for a main alone, the Zizzi healthy options provide a reasonably-priced, filling lunchtime alternative; halo included.

Zizzi Restaurants in central London:

20 Bow Street, WC2E 7AW
Tel: 020 7836 6101

73-75 The Strand, WC2R 0DE
Tel: 020 7240 1717

110-116 Wigmore Street, W1U 3RS
Tel: 020 7935 2336

Unit 1, 33-41 Charlotte Street, W1T 1RR
Tel: 020 7436 9440

35-38 Paddington Street, W1U 4HQ
Tel: 020 7224 1450