African Eats Cuisine — Restaurant in Pittsburgh

Hello. I really dislike giving bad reviews especially after giving a great 5 star review. My very first experience which was some time last year was great. Over time, the quality of certain foods are going down as well as portions. I frequent this place often for the Egusi stew with fufu, and the fresh fish. Some times I get the pepper fresh fish. Well I invited a friend to come with me on the 18th of February. She ordered the shrimp friend rice, a steak meal, and puff puff. We arrived 5 minutes before 11 because the site pulled said they closed at 11:30. Well the lady working who I’ve never seen until last night was beyond unprofessional. She right out said you come to order 5 minutes before closing. We explained what time we got off the site and she checks to make sure our orders can be taken and they can. I asked for my usual with no head for the fish. She stated that we never give the head of the fish. I stated that I have received the head so I make sure I asked for it not to be put in my dish. So a young man comes and rings me up a different price (lower) then what was given from the lady and I tipped. She asked my friend before paying can she tip, not once, not twice, but four times. Your tip is depended on service provided. Well we wait for our food, receive it, and we checked on the car just to make sure we had everything. My friends steak meal was 3 small pieces of meat with 4 cucumbers, 2 tomatoes, and a strip of lettuce. Why would you even give that to someone?? The fried shrimp platter literally came with 4 pieces of shrimp on top. We didn’t know that because we seen the shrimp in the car and thought the platter was good until we got home. The steak platter was taken back in the store. This same rude lady stated that “the food is Nigerian so what portions did you expect?” This is not ok. We spent almost $80, why wouldn’t give a decent portion of food. My egusi was watery with bone cartilage. My fish was great this time with decent portions which I haven’t had in a while. Sorry this is LONG. But you can’t be rude to people and why are you lowering your portions amount when people are spending a decent amount of money? Last night was such a horrible experience. Now I have to research another Nigerian restaurant. I know I’m all over the place but I’m rushing but everything thing still remains the same. My friend will be posting a review to. She was so upset that I felt so bad because I invited her. I also told her to check her food because of portion sizes and how some people serve you less then a happy meal size portions and others do right by their customers. Last night was just bad all the way around. Do better and I see we aren’t the only one with...

Love this place & the hospitality

2.18.24 edit: (down from 5 stars to 3; 5th time here)

I'm not sure what happened but a few things were extremely off today and I'll say it started with the service.

It was cold; many people kept their outerwear on as they were eating. I had to put my scarf and mittens on as we waited for our food.

We ordered goat pepper soup, server brings it out with other parts of our order on the same tray but takes the pepper soup to another table. When I mentioned it, he insults my intelligence and declares that no soup came out even though we saw it.

Dele proceeds to ask/beg "Why we just can't manage with the goat stew that he brought instead because they were so busy today and it would take too long to bring the soup"

Why not just tell us that when we ordered and we could have elected to change our order to something else ?

We were never offered even water to drink. Thankfully we brought our own bottle.

The side bar area which is actually quite beautifully decorated and has a nice vibe was completely empty; yet music from there was blasting into the dining area when there was already music playing in the dining area. I asked Dele to fix this and he did. Shortly after, YouTube comes on the one remaining sound system and for 5 minutes I guess everyone was too busy to fix it until I had to again ask for it to be switched back to ambient entertainment.

For $15 it is highway robbery to charge for 2 small pieces of fish see the pic and red pepper stew. Squirrel Hill rent be damned. This is NOT ok. Serving sizes in general need to be reconsidered. This has been true since our first order.

No one came to ask us how our food was. Not once.

Table had hardened and dried food from a previous order. I used a limited supply of napkins to cover this and move past it. One problem there were only 2 or 3 napkins now left for our meal. Cake napkins, not dinner napkins. When I looked around to see if we could borrow from another table... There were no napkins anywhere.

Women's bathroom had only paper towel above the toilet for use and hardly any soap.

Dele was bold enough to declare he preferred only a cash tip but pre-selected 20% on the machine that processed my card.

I love our West African family too much to not leave this honest review because I KNOW we can do better.

So...

This was my first time eating African food, and I was extremely excited. I had been hearing about this restaurant for a while, and wanted to try it. It’s located in the popular murray avenue in Squirrel hill, surrounded by many other restaurants. I’ll cover the food later, but I have to begin by saying that the service was dismal. When we went for lunch around noon, there was nobody when we entered the restaurant and we had to shout to see if anybody was around to help us get seated. Our server was the least responsive server I have ever encountered, and it almost looked like he was unhappy to be there. No smiles, no greetings. Anyway, we sat down and ordered our food. Since we were trying this for the very first time, we wanted to be safe and went with safer options as suggested by our friend. When he returned back with the food, there were no plates. We had to explicitly ask for plates, and then he returned with just one plate for both of us, and we had to ask for another one. The whole thing was bizarre. When we got done with food, we then had to shout again to see if he would bring our check. I don’t know if they’re understaffed, but this is not how you treat a customers specially in a dine in setting. The only saving grace was towards the end of the meal when a gentleman who I assume to be, the owner came and had conversation with us about the food and recommended us some food to try the next time. He seemed really nice and was welcoming. He also did not charges any tip, which I’m not sure, is the norm at that restaurant or why he did that. Now coming to the food itself, it was pretty tasty. We had the jollof rice which was pretty flavourful. He also had the efiroro which seem to be a type of spinach stew. Honestly, that was super unique, and I have never tasted anything like it. Again, I’m not in a position to tell if it was authentic, but it was still quite tasty, nevertheless. I guess African food is an acquired taste and I guess it’ll take me a while to get used to all the flavours. Overall, I can recommend this place if you want to try new cuisine but I would avoid dine in and just...