Review: Mantra Lounge and Restaurant (Victoria Island)
Let me begin by explaining my current situation. I am "less employed" at the moment, which means I have plenty of time to catch up on restaurants I have missed in the past few months.
I’ve seen ads for Mantra but never actually known where it was. We actually first drove into the place before realizing it’s actually beside Sherlaton.
Now, we LOVE Sherlaton. It looks like a workplace lunch hall, the food is cheap, the drinks are cheaper and they are consistently the best indian food you can find in Lagos. Maybe I’ll do a full review for them in the future. But yea, I figured that Mantra would be similar.
Listen, the only similarities between Mantra and Sherlaton is that the food is fantastic. Let me just get that out of the way. Okay on to the review. Brace yourself, this is long!
Mantra is beautiful. It’s a gorgeous gorgeous space that’s almost too detailed. There are beautiful doors and windows everywhere. Gorgeous arches, the space is well lit without being overly bright. There’s a wild mix of colors from the blue walls, to random red doors, the green faux marble lights on the table, the chairs that are very reminiscent of our old house in Surulere… It would have been easy for it to all go left but the space just comes off as very lux and comfortable. I could easily spend 5 hours there and not notice. It helps that you’re so far removed from outside. There’s not a single actual window. It feels like you’ve been transported to a different India-inspired world. It’s perfect for pictures and clearly others think so cause there were three different photoshoots going on when we were there. Luckily, the space is large enough that they didn’t really affect us. It was just amusing to witness.
My only complaint about the space was the really strong diffusers they use. I have a thing about restaurants having strong smells. It was nice but very overwhelming. I got used to it sha so…
Now onto the food and drink. We went for my cousin’s birthday and chose to try out their unlimited drinks menu cause I do love me an unlimited deal.
The drinks menu was way longer than I anticipated and offered a good range of signature cocktails as well as classics. It’s probably the longest unlimited drinks menu in Lagos right now. I started with the Mantra Magic which was alright. It had gin and lychee so I was never gonna hate it but it didn’t blow my socks off. It was a light refreshing intro for the night.
I followed that with the Maharani Sip which was pretty amazing. Perfect amount of sweetness, strong, slightly tart and glittery??? Literally couldn’t ask for anything else in a cocktail. Unfortunately, the ones my people ordered after weren’t as good as my first one so it seems they might have a consistency problem at the bar.
Speaking on problems, our first cocktails took over 25 minutes to come. We were told it was because they were busy but there were literally 4 tables in the space. It was fine though because our waitress, Anthonia (who was so so lovely by the way) just told us to order drinks in advance so we wouldn’t have to wait. This ended up being quite funny cause they can’t drop a new drink till you finish the old one so everytime she brought a new drink, we had to chug our drinks so she could drop it. Hilarity definitely ensued.
My next drink was the Naija Picante. There was a whole half rodo in my ice? Who asked for that please? But it was a really yummy drink! Vaguely reminiscent of a margarita with a light spicy kick and the fragrant herbiness from the cilantro. You can easily drink a jug of this. Once more, we got varying versions of this drink. Mine wasn’t as good as the one my sister got but it was still good. My second one was better and this one came with an edible flower in the ice instead of rodo. Consistency in the murrd.
Also they have actual clear ice!!! I love it! They clearly put in a lot of thought into their cocktails and it shows!
I hit them up with a classic next and tried their version of the Paloma. This is the only Paloma I’ve had in Lagos that was made with fresh grapefruit juice as opposed to grapefruit syrup. It was so balanced and delicious. Tart, strong and tequila forward. It came with a salt rim which was completely unnecessary but definitely made it a lot prettier. I also loved the torched grapefruit. I got a second one with no salt rim. It was also delicious.
Restaurant owners generally accept that we’ll make a loss on unlimited deals. What they do is get people in the door and hopefully they have such a good experience that they’ll come back for non-unlimited things. That being said, these were still pretty pricey drinks to include on the unlimited menu.
I got another drink but unfortunately by now I had stopped taking notes cause a babe was gone. If you haven’t been counting, that's 7 cocktails in two hours for N16,000. Got my money’s worth and then some!
I should probably talk about the food at some point yea?
We were expecting Sherlaton type prices, especially since we suspected they were sharing the same kitchen and ingredients. This menu was significantly pricier and we briefly considered doing only drinks there and moving to Sherlaton for food. We decided not to be cheap and we were not disappointed
Our waitress was really good. Knew the menu and advised us accordingly. Warned us that our three pepper lamb was not lamb chops but “mashed lamb” aka a lamb kebab. The lamb was super tender and really flavorful with a lot of fragrant herbs. It came with a green chutney that we all ignored till it came time to dip the fries in it and it was fantastic. Speaking of fries, we got the Mantra Loaded Fries and they were GREAT! Definitely better fried than The Smith’s with a ton of seasoning and a sort of curry mayo situation going on.
The tandoori chicken was also really tender (all their meats are super tender) and really smoky. It was the perfect amount of smoke for me but too much for Toni. I wanna enter the Sherlaton kitchen so bad cause I’ve never cooked in a tandoor oven and I know they just have a bunch of authentic equipment back there!
We got the Crunch Salad as well. Every single one of us exclaimed when we took the first bite because it was SOOOO GOOD! It had a beautiful peanut sesame dressing and the cabbage was nice and crunchy. It was sweet and tangy and cool and very moreish!
The menu primarily features Indian dishes, with some Thai and Indonesian options. The Nasi goreng was decent, but not exceptional. My cousin, however, enjoyed it enough to order a second portion. They were accommodating with his shrimp allergy and served the shrimp on the side. They’re clearly making it fresh so that’s a good thing!
We got the lamb crunch which was a very small portion of basically unseasoned fried meat that could have been any animal. At N9,000, it felt like a waste of money but that was the only disappointing thing we got.
Everything else was a hit and honestly I could eat there every day if my bank account allowed it.
Ah before I forget, when I booked on WhatsApp, they asked if it was a special occasion and it was my cousin’s birthday and they asked for a message for the free birthday dessert so they could customize it. I thought this was pretty thoughtful. Their customer service is top notch! The creme brulee was pretty good. Not over cooked and just slightly sweet. Good stuff.
Postscript
Great food, great drinks, great service and a gorgeous location? Mantra has my heart in a chokehold.
Verdict
Damage
Crispy Lamb - N7000
Nasi Goreng - N12500
Thai Crunch - N9000
Mantra Loaded Fries - N9500
Three Pepper Lamb Seekh - N8000
Unlimited Drinks - N16000
Parking
Parking at that Sherlaton “compound” isn’t always the most fun experience.
