SECRET DINER: Tasty food, poor service

Where:

La Casa Nostra

Whitesands Centre, 1 Main Road, Umdloti Beach

Call:

031 568 1996

Open:

Wed – Fri: noon to 3pm; Sat – Sun: noon to 4pm;

Tuesday – Sunday: 6pm to 10pm

We arrived early and had the choice of the outside balcony, with a bit of a wind or the cosier inside. Menus arrived and our keen young waitress took our drinks orders, a lime and soda (R26) and Amstel (R24).

A complimentary focaccia arrived and pretty good it was. We munched away happily while making our choices. We agreed to share an asparagus dish starter, have our main courses and share a desert. A different waitress took our orders and passed them on to our waitress, who was a bit nervous and appeared to be learning the job.

The place started filling up and getting noisy and we sat back, enjoying the hubbub of happy sounds as friends and families chatted. The place has a lively ambience, comfortable tables and chairs, proper napkins, and the walls are lined with scenes from The Godfather movie.

Time passed and after half an hour we called our waitress over and wondered where our starter was, to be told the other waitress had not told her about our asparagus starter. We were mildly irritated and the waitress went to check on our main courses, a melanzane parmigiana (R119) and calzone alla cacciatore (R139), and reported back that these were coming soon.

Our food arrived and our waitress disappeared before we could order some house wine to go with our main courses, which we had indicated earlier would be our intention. We hailed another waitress and placed our wine order. We were hungry and started eating but then realised we needed to slow down or the wine would arrive after we had finished. The melanzane was delicious, with tomatoes, brinjal and cheese, and my wife loved her food. The calzone was also very tasty with a combination of cheese, chicken and chilli. It has a pleasant bite and I needed something cool to sip on. Our wine, a Diemersdal sauvignon blanc (R42) and Delaire shiraz (R59) arrived about half way through our meal. We both finished our meals. For desert we had the excellent home-made tiramisu with our cappuccinos.

We have been to this restaurant before and enjoyed ourselves. Next time, we will bring our own wine.