Review: Pit Stop Lagos (Victoria Island, Lagos)
PIT STOP LAGOS
92A Younis Bashorun Street, Victoria Island, Lagos | Website | 0802 334 7887
Picking my first restaurant to review was a bit a challenge because I didn’t want to “mess it up”, but my friends helped me and we decided on Pitstop. My sister, on the other hand, wasn’t too excited because of her own experience, but I decided to go anyway and have my own objective experience.
The first thing you notice about Pitstop is all the bikes and fitness paraphernalia in the space. They have those really cool bikes where your smoothie blends while you cycle! The space is somewhere between homey and “maybe I should have thrown on some heels”.
I absolutely hate when waitstaff try to size you up before taking your order, especially when you’re a woman in Lagos. We, i.e. my friends and I, ordered two Long Islands and a classic mojito and told the waitress to tell the bartender to make them extra strong. I wanted the Long Island without the Coke because the Coke is what makes it less potent and SPECIFICALLY asked that the Coke be left out.
Do you know what happened?
Pitstop followed instructions when bring my male friend’s Long Island, but the other Long Island was super weak. Don’t even get me started on the mojito. I know you guys might think it was a coincidence, but it wasn’t. The waitress confirmed that she thought “because we’re ladies” we wouldn’t want it strong.
🤦🏾♀️
To start, I ordered the Chicken Noodle soup. This was my absolute favorite thing of the evening. Sure, it wasn’t spicy like I asked for it to be, the noodles were thankfully not overcooked. It was so comforting that my friends had to beg when they saw how much I loved it and not because their order took 25 years to come out.
The slow cooked lamb shank was going to be main, but unfortunately, I went with the beef and mushroom pie instead. I’d heard great things about the lamb but I saw “slow cooked” with the beef and I got carried away. The pie was basically two pieces of beef with a couple dollops of mushroom sauce in a dry and hard crusted pie. It reminded me of lunch time meat pie in secondary school with just air and potatoes. The mash that it came with was okay and not overwhelming, but the stir fry vegetables were very bland. That said, I liked the red wine gravy so good for them.
My guest ordered the peppered chicken wings and Rodo pepper sauce with a side of their jollof rice. The jollof was surprisingly amazing. It tasted like correct Nigerian smokey jollof and you can almost forgive Pitstop for going with basmati rice. The wings, on the other hand, weren’t too spicy which was great for me, but didn’t please my friend at all.
My other guest ordered Spicy seafood pasta, with tomatoes, prawns, calamari and fish. They call it “spicy” seafood pasta, but there wasn’t a hint of that. The pasta itself was perfectly al dente and I loved how crispy the calamari. The fish was forgettable, however.
The service at Pitstop started off on a really high note but after the drink debacle, it all went downhill. Our waitress kept disappearing and her replacement was really rude and standoffish. They got my friend’s pasta order wrong and gave her chicken instead of seafood. My friend didn’t realize until they literally yanked it off her hands while explaining that it was a mix up.
My friends and I were not quiet about our displeasure, and asked for the manager. They brought out a supervisor who was really soft spoken and sweet. He listened to us and apologized. He tried to make it up with complimentary dessert and shots, but I’m not going to forget this experience in a hurry.
I enjoyed the free cheesecake though.
POSTSCRIPT
I’ll only come back if I’m being dragged there, because I don’t have strength to be doing monitoring spirit on all my orders
VERDICT
PRICE RANGE
N5000 - N15000
PARKING
Pretty limited. Maybe 4 or 5 cars