Brio Pizza, Leeds.

If so, how is being situated on the very edge of a sprawling, modern business park conducive to good business? With 4,500 office workers on the doorstep Monday to Friday, I can understand that lunchtime trade is going to be brisk. But on a cold Saturday night this business park is something of a ghost town. It took me three goes to find the newly opened Brio Pizza on Thorpe Park Estate in south-east Leeds. Were I not going there to review, I would have gladly given up and turned around.

So, imagine my surprise when I walked in and the place was buzzing. What could so easily have been a soulless modern, blond-wood and stainless-steel box was awash with large family gatherings of several generations. Couples, groups of friends, and smaller family groups, filled the remaining tables and all looked like they were having a jolly good time.

Brio Pizza is the latest venture in the highly successful Brio chain – if four restaurants can be called a chain. The original Brio in Leeds was quite formal and was replaced by the more relaxed version in the city in the Light. Meanwhile, over in Harrogate, on Kings Road, the formal approach still works well.

The new-style Brio Pizza is relaxed, as is the menu. But being so unbuttoned has affected its authenticity a little. I don't think bruschetta with shredded duck, spring onions, hoi sin and plum sauce, burgers or steak and chips cut it as Italian. And insalata Waldorf may sound more romantic under that name but is still Waldorf salad.

More enticing dishes of linguine alla salsiccia toscana, ravioli rustica or aragosta e granchino are more to my liking. The list of pizza sounds more authentic with the usual suspects of margherita et al and a few, new concoctions including a buon giorno (good morning) pizza of Yorkshire ham and eggs.

Excellent chewy ciabatta bread with spicy olives and a tapenade (French but delicious all the same) kept us amused while we waited for starters of prosciutto with caramelised pears, and a ruccola (rocket), dolcelatte and beetroot salad. The caramelised pears were more poached than caramelised and had an over-heavy aroma of cinnamon. Thank goodness the ham was good. The ruccola was fine, the dolcelatte cheese equally so, but some chunks were from the hardish outer edge of the cheese rather than the creamy centre. The beetroot, tomatoes and a light, lemony olive oil saved the dish, transforming the salad from fine to enjoyable. We went into serious Italian food with mains. The mettle of the kitchen was tested with a linguine ai frutti di mare (linguine pasta with seafood), not an easy dish to get right. The pasta dish was described as flat spaghetti in a light tomato sauce – it was but the onions were undercooked – with gambas, clams and fresh mussels.

The seafood was cooked to perfection and totally trustworthy in its freshness. It also provided more than the menu promised with the addition of tender, squeaky-fresh calamari. Had the sauce displayed the same quality as the seafood and pasta this would have been a textbook example of a great Italian dish.

Fettucine certosina – noodles with tiger prawns, calamari, queenie scallops, pancetta, peas and cream was a lovely merging of surf and turf wrapped a light cream. It was a matter of personal taste as to whether this was a good or great dish.

Puddings are never anything to get too excited about in a trattoria-style Italian. Pannacotta (cooked cream), a bit of tiramisu, a choice of gelati (ice cream) or in our case, an English-sounding 1970s fudge cake with chocolate sauce. If you have any memory of puddings from that era and you thought them good you would not have been disappointed in this one, lots of fudgey cake and gallons of chocolate sauce.

More exciting was a glass of Tuscan holy wine (Vin Santo) and cantucci biscuits. I spent a pleasant 10 minutes dunking the hard, almond biscuits and sucking wine from them. I loved it.

There are more ups than down at Brio Pizza. The main plusses are the atmosphere and the price of the food with the weighting of main courses mainly under 10 and wine under 20 – although only one red or white wine is available by the glass.

Service is efficient, with the bonus of owner Franco Pardini bustling around checking all is in order and sharing his passion, enthusiasm and stories from his days as owner of the Flying Pizza in Leeds, Le Celle, Franco's Pescatore – to name just a few. Overall, a surprisingly, pleasant evening.

Brio Pizza, 4600 Park Approach, Century Way, Thorpe Park Industrial Estate, Leeds, LS15 8ZB Tel: 0113 260 5580. Open: Mon-Fri 8.30am-10pm, Sat 12.00-10pm, Sun 12.00-8pm.