La Cucina — Restaurant in Goa

Situated in an area that primarily caters to an international crowd, La Cucina does its best to come pretty close to an authentic Italian restaurant experience.

I love the open area concept. It's a perfect ambiance for a dinner party, with a cool breeze keeping you company while you enjoy your meal. It may not be necessary to get a reservation even if you have a big party; there's plenty of seating.

We started off with a Garden Salad - if you're at an Italian restaurant, you have to go for a salad. This salad was pretty good. I loved the combination of the cheese with the vinaigrette dressing. As a starter, we also had a classic Bruschetta and Garlic Bread. Both were amazing. The fresh tomatoes cut beautifully through the lightly olive oil toasted bread.

One of my favourite pastas is Gnocchi. I have yet to have a decent on in India. Unfortunately, La Cucina didn't meet the mark with this dish. The gnocchi served was chewy and didn't go well with the pesto base. It also got too cold too fast.

The Garden Crush pizza was delightful and I do recommend. The crust was perfect and the base to sauce to cheese ratio was spot on.

For dessert, we went for the Choco Brownie. This is similar to a classic sizzling brownie; I do prefer the original though. The ice cream and brownie tasted great individually but it was a little too much together. The combination wasn't able to balance each other out.

Service is amazing. There are multiple servers available. Even the owner of the place waits on you from time to time.

La Cucina is a great place to hang out with you friends and...

The experience was underwhelming to say the least. The food arrived suspiciously fast. We ordered a veggie lovers pizza. The pizza was bland. The sauce didn't have much taste. We also ordered the mushroom spinach lasagna. We dug our spoon into the lasagna and noticed that there was no lasagna sheet pasta. The sauce had a peculiar aftertaste and was probably stale and spoilt. We called over our server to mention that this plate was only sauce covered in cheese but no pasta. They asked us to order something else from the menu. So I guess the lasagna is just sauce and cheese. Speaking of cheese, the cheese was tasteless and not fresh. It was the cheap cheese you buy in the supermarket which melts and turns extremely greasy. So all the ingredients that they boast about aren't what they speak of. This review comes from me and my partner (french) and we've had our fair share of good european food in Goa to judge the food fairly. His words : "This pizza reminds me of the frozen pizzas I was buying in the supermarket for 2 euros when I was broke" However here are the positives The staff was extremely polite and kind. They pulled the chair for me, set the table beautifully and gave us good service. The ambience was good too. The restaurant is beautiful and cozy. We sent back the lasagna and they didn't add it to the bill. Which was good.

It seems like the restaurant is trying to cut costs which show in cheap ingredients and low quality food. Good quality ingredients are essential for any...

Have eaten there twice. The first time it was empty around 7pm and we ordered a pizza to go. It took them 20 minutes to prepare. Not sure why it took so long on a wood fired oven. All in all the pizza was good enough to come back again.

Next we went as a big group when it was busy. This experience was much below standards. We had 3 tables and the order was taking too much time. But for us it was ok. Us adults started getting our order but the kids table was still waiting. We had to ask for plates then cutlery then water etc. This is not expected in a restaurant even though you are busy. We didn't have any glasses and later they were honest enough to say they have run out of glasses. At this moment we requested if they can even provide us cups so the little ones can drink water. It also felt like the restaurant has run out of salt, all the food had no taste and were very bland. This was more than an hour later after we sat.

Eventually the adults finished our food and realised that all the mains on the kids table are still not arrived and the kids are all hungry. After a few reminders to the team, they suggested if we want to cancel the order. Towards the last half of us being there, the place was filling up with smoke from the burning wood in the oven. Being an open air restaurant, smoke inside plus the heat plus some people smoking was very unpleasant.

All in all it was a very...