Places in Lagos| Casa Mia

Have you ever heard of Casa Mia???

Casa Mia is a new restaurant and lounge that started operations in December 2019 in Victoria Island, Lagos right beside Eric Kayser. It shares a building with an exquisite furniture company that sells Roberto Cavalli furniture. I just had to put that in there because I starred at the furniture items all through my stay at the restaurant last Friday.

AMBIANCE
The beauty of the space is hard to ignore because it’s clearly obvious someone paid a whole lot of attention to every detail. Everything in the restaurant is unique; from the restaurant sign to the furniture, the clock, the wallpapers, the lights, the colours, the restrooms, etc.

You have to walk a flight of stairs to the restaurant on the first floor and I like that for some weird reason I can’t explain. The space is warm and inviting with two sitting areas both indoors and outdoors. The indoor sitting has a dark and cool feel to it and the outdoor is a typical lounge.

MENU
To be honest, I’m not sure what category of dishes I should say the restaurant serves because there’s a bit of everything. The menu is a test run and “subject to change” is clearly stated on it so I totally understand.

 

WHAT WE ATE
Choosing a starter was easy but when it came to mains, we struggled a bit between the different categories you can see on the menu above. We ordered Hot Thai Chilli Wings and Calamari Fritti for starters. For mains, we finally settled for Atlantic Fisher Penne (because seafood pasta is always a good idea) and Jamaican Oxtail at our waiter’s recommendation.

While our table was being set, I noticed that the plates, cutleries and cutlery holder were customized (can I just meet the owner of this restaurant please?) We absolutely loved our starters and our only complaint was that we could taste the seasoning in the food. I am almost one hundred per cent sure that the chef or kitchen staff cooked with some kind of Nigerian seasoning cube and was too generous with it.

While the Jamaican Oxtail and basmati tricolour rice was a very delicious meal, we had to send the Atlantic Fisher Penne back because it didn’t look like what was described in the menu and it cost N8,500. It was basically a tomato-based penne pasta cooked without seafood with grilled and fried seafood placed on top as you can see in the photo below. We were immediately disappointed and no amount of convincing could make us eat that.

 

SERVICE & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Though our waiter was nice and attended to us well, we didn’t have a good experience overall. Besides the weird seafood pasta, another waiter splashed sauce all over us while he packed up our starter plates. We went to the bathroom hoping to get the stains off then we found out there was no water though the bathroom was really beautiful. No water in a new restaurant in Victoria Island???? They managed to get a cloth for us which we dampened with water to get the stains off after several apologies.

DAMAGE
Hot Thai Chilli Wings ~ N3,500
Calamari Fritti ~ N4,000
Jamaican Oxtail  ~ N7,500

It’s a shame that I don’t know if I would ever go back because it’s such a beautiful place and I was looking forward to trying a cocktail from their bar.

Mariam Shittu