Review: Pit Stop Lagos (Victoria Island, Lagos) (Copy)
PIT STOP LAGOS
92A Younis Bashorun Street, Victoria Island, Lagos | Website | 0802 334 7887
NOSA: A sports-themed bar with a bike shop in it, what could possibly go wrong?
FOLLY: That also offers spin classes. Again, what could go wrong?
NOSA: A lot. If you’re trying to eat, the prices feel like a nail in your bike tyre so maybe that’s why there’s a bike shop. If you’re trying to drink, there’s not much to work with on the cocktail menu. The owner insists it’s still a work in progress so the only way is up.
FOLLY: I think the prices are for “crowd control”. If that reference is lost on you, Harvest (a restaurant in Lekki) justified their ridiculously priced (N5,000) non-alcoholic beverages as being for crowd control purposes. Honestly, compared to Pitstop, the Harvest was kind.
NOSA: Before we get into the pricing, the different items on the menu are named after an athlete or a sports reference. For the most part, there isn’t a connection between the names and the plates. Just feels like they were picked out of a random name generator. Sometimes, it’s works like the Hattrick, and other times, it just makes no sense. Considering how much money it appears they put into this place, the menu should be a lot better. Also, for a “sporty” place, there really should more healthy options on the menu.
FOLLY: There’s one lonely salad on the menu, for instance. Of course, there are other ways to be healthy apart from eating a salad and maybe that’s why they have the two soups and baked cauliflower on their menu, but they still could have been a lot more intentional with it. For example, they have 4 desserts but none are “lite” versions.
NOSA: We ordered three things from the starter section of the menu including the fish fingers, chicken kebab, and dumplings.
FOLLY: We’re not going to use the random sports name cause it’s confusing, you can find those in the footer.
NOSA: Because their fish fingers are called "Usain Bolt” and I’ve been struggling to find the connection.
NOSA: The chicken was an extreme let down. A strong 2/10 from me. It tasted like it wasn’t brined. More specifically, it tasted like a white man-made it, and you know I have philosophical differences with the whites when it comes to chicken. Zero flavours, just like they like it.
FOLLY: Some spices must have been involved in making the chicken but it tasted like the person was afraid to add said spices or even salt. The Chimichurri, as well, was bland and tasted like light version with not enough garlic, not enough olive oil, and not enough herbs. We made the chicken skewers work by adding salt, pepper, and the dipping sauce of the fish fingers.
NOSA: I preferred the fish fingers. It needed salt, but it was technically sound. Like, whoever made it followed the instructions to a T.
FOLLY: It was well breaded, crispy and all.
NOSA: The dumplings were a no, but I’m not going to get into that because I really, really want to talk about how our main, the Hattrick, was an utter waste of money.
FOLLY: I didn’t even taste the dumplings so I can’t get into it even if you guys wanted me to. I didn’t taste them because I don’t like kimchi (later learned that they didn’t even use kimchi) and that dark grey blob of a sauce was a strong no for me.
Okay back to the Hattrick. As the name implies, it’s a trio. In this case, it’s a trio platter that comprises of gizdodo, prawns and chicken wings for Fifteen Thousand Nigerian Naira.
NOSA: I expected it to be a letdown, but I couldn’t stop myself from ordering it. I knew it was going to be akin to setting my money on fire and YET, I still ordered it.
FOLLY: We did it for you. We eat through the struggle, separate the wheat from the chaff, so you can make better decisions. Wait, we should make a t-shirt with that on it. Oh, wait we do. Buy our t-shirts here.
NOSA: I thought the platter would come with some special stuff to justify the 15k, but NOPE, it had none of that shit. Nothing about it was special.
FOLLY: We must have been paying for the ambience and the gas they used to boil the gizzard. Besides the obvious waste of money, the chicken wings and prawns were spectacularly awful.
Chicken wings, these were at least 500k on the Scoville scale without any advanced warning. The menu didn’t even say that the chicken wings in the platter were hot, hot, hot. Next, you know when you cook stew and you haven’t boiled or fried the pepper mix yet and it tastes raw-ish, yeah that was also a problem here, it tasted like an extremely spicy ata-lilo.
Shrimp, after being ripped off by the size of the shrimp. I thought every cook knows that you can treat your shrimp with some lemon juice before cooking to get rid of the fishy smell and taste in turn.
NOSA: The running theme at Pitstop was the lack of seasoning. The chef avoided it like a plague. Like, even salt. The mash, for instance, had the perfect texture but it was just so bland and tasteless.
Honestly, the spaghetti was the best thing we got. Seasoning appeared out of the blue.
FOLLY: Just like the fish fingers, whoever made the meatballs followed instructions to a T and seasoned the meatballs with herbs and spices before rolling them up. We were very surprised. The pricing, at N6500 however, rendered this not worth it at all.
NOSA: It’s not the best spaghetti and meatballs I’ve had in my life, but this was such a relief.
FOLLY: We ordered dessert too, but that was a mess.
NOSA: The cheesecake tasted sandy.
FOLLY: Technically, grainy but they were overcooked and the eggs began to set hence the grainy/sandy texture.
NOSA: Sounds like sand to me
POSTSCRIPT
NOSA: You can tell the chef went to culinary school, but the food doesn’t taste any good. So how we go do am?
FOLLY: Hard pass. I’ll never eat here again even if it was free.
VERDICT
DAMAGE
Usain Bolt - N4500 i.e. fish fingers
Son Heung Min - N4000 i.e dumplings
Something Light - N3500 i.e. chicken kebabs
Check out my six-packs - N6500 i.e meatballs
Hattrick - N15000 i.e. platter
PRICE RANGE
N5000 - N15000
PARKING
Pretty limited. Maybe 4 or 5 cars