Farfallino | 20/24 Ozumba Mbadiwe Ave, Victoria Island, Lagos | 09119795797 | Instagram

I had never heard of Farfallino. In fact, I had no clue what happened in that Black Diamond building. Nosa sent it to us as a review suggestion and I was immediately washed by their Instagram page. I had to go and so we did.

I’m gonna start this off by saying I was GREATLY offended by this restaurant. I feel like it looked me DEAD IN MY EYES and called me an ignorant buffoon with the palette of a newly birthed foal. Yes, I was that upset by this faux Italian space. If you’re gonna charge me these prices for food, the least you can do is at least serve decent food.

We started off with the tomato bruschetta which was the only good thing we got that night. It’s pretty hard to ruin bruschetta though so I’m not gonna wax too poetic. The tomatoes were fresh and sweet. The side salad of arugula was well dressed but a little on the salty side. Toni and I like salt so it was fine but the average person might find it a bit much. The portion was small for N15,000 but Tinubu’s Nigeria, I guess.

For our mains we got the seafood saffron risotto and a seafood tomato based pasta.

The saffron risotto was such a disappointment. First, they used fake saffron which is offensive. With that many strands of saffron in the risotto, the color should have been a deep orange and the saffron’s earthy slight sweet flavor would have actually been overwhelming but this had zero saffron flavor. I also know what I paid for the saffron chilling in my spice drawer and if they used this much in every dish, they would be bankrupt in three days. A risotto is cooked over medium heat while being constantly stirred using a starchy short grain. Your stock is added in a ladle at a time, giving the rice time to absorb it before adding more. This helps with a slow even cook and the constantly stirring breaks down the outsides of grains of rice so that they form a nice creamy sauce. These people gave me boiled fried rice with small starch water at the bottom.

No na, just look at the video! For an “authentic” Italian restaurant this is inexcusable. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it wasn’t properly seasoned and the only flavor I got was prawn water. I literally couldn’t eat it. I took one or two forks and immediately put my plate to the side.

Shout out to the service though! It was impeccable. As soon as I put my plate away, our server was right by our table checking to see what was wrong. I explained and they took the dish away and asked us to order something else instead. The manager also came over to apologize.

The tomato pasta was also disappointing. It was made with a super sweet, very acidic, over reduced tomato sauce that was more like tomato paste. It instantly triggered Toni’s acid reflux. It also had thick pasta that was freshly but clearly machine made and not allowed to cook long enough. I have nothing against machine made fresh pasta but if you’re going to use it, you need to realize that it often ends up tougher than hand made pasta and should be given a slightly longer cooking time. The seafood was all completely unseasoned. It was edible but that’s about it. At those prices??? I shouldn’t be calling it “edible”, give me some good food, dammit!!!

We barely ate half and took the rest to go. We gave it to a friend who informed us that it had gone off in her fridge by the next morning.

Our next mistake was ordering dessert. In lieu of a dish to replace the risotto, we decided to get another dessert. How could we do such a mistake??? 

If you know me, you know Tiramisu is one of my absolute favorite desserts on earth! So of course, at an Italian restaurant, I’m gonna get some damn tiramisu.

Guys… It was not good. No layers built, just a cup full of egg yolk free mascarpone with three broken pieces of lady fingers at the bottom. If there was any coffee in it then my taste buds were clearly on vacation. Then at the bottom, a really sickly sweet, synthetic syrup and some compound chocolate balls that left a plasticky residue on my tongue.

Why were those chocolate balls there? Why were they compound chocolate and not couverture? Why was there a syrup??? Why didn’t they make a proper sabayon based cream? What was this tiramisu and why????  So many questions, so few answers. 

We also got the pistachio cheesecake. It was clearly a premade and possibly boxed frozen pie. Toni thought it looked like floral foam. It was weirdly powdery, had a synthetic green color and tasted weirdly minty and not at all like cheesecake nor pistachio.There was also a sprinkle of very old, very stale pistachios. It was such a disappointment.

The whole experience was a disappointment.

ALSO!!! After charging N38,000 for the mid ass pasta, they had the nerve to charge N1,000 for takeaway! Razzzzzzzzzzz
Shout out to them for aesthetics and service sha, but if I want to eat Italian food going forward, I will make it in my house.

POST SCRIPT

Honestly, I think this is good old racismo at play. They figure Nigerians don’t know any better so they serve us nonsense at astronomical prices. There was just no attempt to actually make good food. I do not think I have been this disappointed in a restaurant ever. Like they didn’t even try! On our way out sha, we clocked that all the non-Nigerians were eating pizzas and salads so perhaps those are the only good things there. Too bad we won’t be going back to find out.

VERDICT

PARKING

There’s plenty of it even though they shoved us in the tightest corner with a lot of debris

DAMAGE

Bruschetta Stracciatella E Pesto - 15,000

Linguine Frutti Di Mare - 36,000

Risotto Ai Gamberi E Zafferano - 35,000

Tiramisu Classico - 18,000

Cheesecake Al Pistachio - 16,000

Water - 2,000

Takeaway pack - 1,000

*7.5& VAT & 5% Consumption tax charged