Casablanca — Restaurant in West Virginia

With inflation running away in the U.S., a good value is important. I took my family to Casablanca for a rare dinner excursion and we were impressed. The building looks a little dated from the outside but everything else was great. The owners are the cooks, they are of Egyptian descent and they seem to know how to cook. Casablanca is one of just a few individually owned and operated eateries in the Beckley area.

We started with a Mediterranean Nacho appetizer. I wasn’t sure but the wife wanted to try it. I’ve never had anything quite like it. Absolutely delicious.

Then she and I had the Lazagna dinners. She had a small tossed salad and I upgraded to a small Greek salad. (I’m not sure but I don’t think the Blue Cheese and Thousand Island dressings are home made.). Still, they were both good salads, fresh ingredients, tasty and ample portions.

The main course, Lazagna, was enormous. After the appetizer and salad, we both took most of ours home to enjoy tomorrow as another meal. Our youngest son had a cheeseburger and fries, and he devoured it without complaint. Our other son, Trey, had the fettuccine Alfredo with chicken. He said he really liked it. And…If you knew Trey, you would know how significant that statement really is. He took a lot of his entree home to eat later as well. Very generous portions all around.

We all had fountain Pepsi products but I saw at least one person having wine with a small specialty pizza of some sort. It was a single serve bottle, but it was wine. I’m not sure what their wine offerings look like.

The wait staff should be mentioned here. They were friendly, somewhat casual in their approach but professional at the same time. We noticed that they didn’t have a dedicated host/hostess but every customer was still greeted verbally as they walked in. Despite the lack of a host, they made a deliberate effort to deliver consistent, quality customer service. I think that adds stars to any eatery’s review.

The cost, before the tip, for the four of us, was $65.16. We tipped the standard percentage for a nice restaurant.

We thought it was a good meal at a reasonable price. It’s a locally owned restaurant where the cooks know their way around a kitchen. We splurged a little to do this and the value was good. I do...

We went to dinner (6 of us) because we heard it was good. We had never eaten there so we went in and it was busy. They were cleaning off tables and so we had to wait a bit no big deal. As we are waiting, there is a woman screaming from the front of the restaurant at the employees asking why they weren’t working faster to clear tables. We overlooked that but they tried to sit 6 of us at a 4 person table with 2 chairs on the ends of the table. In the mean time my husband asked a waitress who it was that was yelling. The lady yelling says we can sit at the small table and goes on to yell back to my husband that she is the owner. He tells her the table is not big enough and we’ll wait for a bigger one. She proceeds to tell him we can take the smaller table or leave! We were in shock. As you can imagine we left and will never go there again. She was the rudest person I have ever came in contact with and I will give them a terrible review to anyone that asks. She (the owner) may not care but she will notice a decrease in business. People beware unless you want to have dinner with a woman yelling the whole time at her staff and wants to sit you at a table way to small for your group. One of the ladies with us was my 96 yr old mother in law. Shame on this owner. We did not order so no review on food but the owner’s attitude and disrespect for paying customers was enough for me to give it 1 star. If I could do 0...

We started out with house salad it was not bad just poor choice of plating. It was delivered on a flat saucer and should have been in a bowl. You could not mix in the dressing and the lettuce keep falling off edge. Next we order the spaghetti with meat sauce and meatballs. The portion size was good but consistency was terrible mine tasted like brown sugar and cinnamon while my sons tasted meaty. The noodles were over cooked not al dente. Meat balls were very inconsistent out of 4 one was seasoned well one was over seasoned and 2 were bland. We also ordered a 14 inch pepperoni and cheese pizza this had a decent taste while hot nothing special. After letting it cool down it took on the taste of a cold red baron pizza. Next we tried the sausage roll this was most disappointing. The dough was terrible no salt sugar or butter just bland. The onions and peppers were slimy inside not appetizing. Sausage was precooked from looks and over cooked when finished in the bread. Over all I will not be revisiting here again the stomach ache after...