Casa Nostra Italian restaurant — Restaurant in Riga

We'd only been in Riga for several hours when we ventured out from our hotel on a wet evening looking for a cozy place to have a nice meal. We checked out a couple of places but kept walking until we found Casa Nostra. It was charming. Things were very busy but they offered us a table, not an ideal location, but we were too hungry by this point to refuse, plus we liked the vibe. When Sandra, the Italian owner with roots in Australia, stopped by our table to make sure everything was o.k we knew we had chosen the right place. She was delightful, and gave us their history which made us feel like we were immediate friends. The food was very good, the service better than excellent and the ambience was warm and cozy--just what we were looking for, so we returned the next night and the night after that. All three evenings in Riga, we elected to eat at Casa Nostra because everything was delicious and the service was so good. It was also very convenient to our hotel. We loved our server, who always knew what we wanted to drink and then at the end of each meal she'd pour for us a wonderful pistachio liquor as an after dinner treat. We really enjoyed our entire experience at this authentic Italian restaurant, where the owners are Italian and executive chef is Sicilian, After our last evening there, several people, including Sandra and her charming husband, came over to hug us good-bye. We highly recommend the food and the service at this charming...

From the moment we arrived we received a NO welcome at all. The elderly lady, presumably the co-owner, spent 5mins chatting with other guests, while ignoring us standing at the door. The grimpy elderly man, presumably her husband, brushed past us a few of times, while delivering pizza boxes outside, without even greeting us or asking someone to attend to us. Totally zero smile or welcome greeting. So charming (Not!). After we finally got seated outside and waited 10mins for menus (which they forgot!), the waitress said to order everything now because she does not want to come out again to take the drinks orders (wth!!!!). We put up with the lousy service because we went to 3 other restaurants that were full and google reviews were mostly positive. I can put up with non-existant customer service, if the reviews were actually true and food was great. It was not! My carbonara was basically scrambled eggs. I mentioned this to the server, and she later told me that the chef said that it was supposed to be that way!!!😂😂😂 i am a carbonara afficionado …. Basically i order that in most italian restaurants i go to and judge them by it! Romans would have cried, if they were served dry scrambled eggs with pasta and get told that it is how that was supposed to be. Avoid this place at all costs. We had dinner at Snatch the next day and that was fantastic italian food! I dare say best food we had in our trip across 4...

-Burrata on my pizza was mediocre at best, the pizza also had too much Rucola and the dough was missing fluff, but the pizza sauce was great, really juicy. -On the other hand the noodles my Girlfriend had were dry and boring, at least properly coverd in parmesan. -Cappuccino was just bad, the latte on the other hand was fantastic. Coffee was reasonably priced, but all of the Softdrinks were completely overpriced. If they would have at least been homemade but a 0.33l coke for 4€? Also why won't you serve tap water, especially if a coffee had been already bought? -Service was alright, didn't feel like they gave everyone enough time (too blame is mostly likely the owner of the restaurant seeking higher profit and thus employing too little workers), but they also didn't mess anything up and seemed like genuinely nice people, if they would have had the time to be nice. -Atmosphere was okay, music wasn't too loud, a somewhat pleasant crowdiness, that reminds of Italy, but in the background a huge TV with Live videos from Venice was playing, I could have been absolutely alright with that, but they were just advertisment for Hotels? -The pricing overall was okay, but for that price, you can absolutely expect a different standard. As always, I can not blame the workers, only the owners and managers seeking profit, this restaurant would have been great if not so trimmed on profit and rather run...