Utazi kitchen & bar

We arrived Utazi at 8:50pm and placed our orders. An hour later, our food still wasn't ready even after several prompts to a waitress that seemed very disinterested. This was surprising as the place wasn't even crowded. We had to leave at 10:05pm after the waitress told us the kitchen was going to further delay our orders. At times, she seemed either overwhelmed or confused. This was highly disappointing as we looked forward to dining here on this trip. I'm not a first time customer and last visited in 2022 and got a much better experience then. A customer's time is precious and there's no dish worth over an hour's wait especially when the servers do not understand the need to provide updates without being prompted. Will not be coming back and do not recommend if basic service is lacking and our patience was taken for granted.

The food was very delicious. I ordered the peppered snail. Fried rice was very tasty. Its obvious the meals were prepared from the scratch.

One thing ill say is this: don’t go to utazi if you’re exceptionally hungry. Bro! Those people made us wait for hours before we got served. Our waiter said it wait time was for 30-40 Minutes and it ended being almost 2 hours wait time. Also he didn’t come back to us to give any update whatsoever. He just left us for that long. Meanwhile we were getting hungry and impatient. There is a table bell which we kept ringing and no one came to us still. So be prepared, their service can be mid. Anyways, for ambience, it’s okay particularly the ground floor. We went on a Sunday afternoon and said ground floor was already booked by private customers so they seated us in the ‘VIP’ seats upstairs. Said place had air conditioning not functioning properly and weird lighting. For the food, i ordered native soup and poundo yam. The native soup was okay but it was very watery honestly. But i liked that their goat meat was soft. We also ordered peppered snail but it was too salty. Also their ‘fresh’ pineapple juice was not fresh but fermented and getting sour/bitter. I think our experience might have been better if we had a hands on waiter attending to us. Anyways, go and see for yourself if you want but for me, I won’t be going back there.

The visit to Utazi was such an impromptu one and as such, we feel we probably need a second trip to assess properly. When it comes to traditional food, we've always kind of preferred actual local spots as we always feel they're better value for money 💸 At Utazi, we came for their catfish peppersoup, which we had to take away, but in the meantime, while waiting for it, we decided to have nkwobi to just prepare our stomachs. The waiter (who was super nice and quick to attend to us throughout) told us it will be ready in 5 minutes which we didn't believe cos well this is Lagos and even those who use 3 hours always say 5 minutes⏰️ To our surprise, it did take just 5 minutes. We kind of prefer isiewu, but it wasn't available. The nkwobi was really nice and soft, though, so if that's for you, you should love it. Like we said, you probably get more in terms of quantity in street joints, but the quality on this was good. The catfish peppersoup was greattt❤️🔥. Loved loved it. Was so well spiced, and that was a major winner. Fully recommend you having that when you go there. All in all, even though we would probably point you to some street joints first for local chow like this, Utazi do themselves justice and don't really miss on any points Even the pricing isn't that bad compared to street joints. We'll probably be back for more some time in the future 📍IG: @utazing Onijekuje Verdict: Worth a visit✅️ Damage💸💰🤑 Nkwobi- 3500 (we think Catfish Peppersoup- 8500 Pineapple Juice - 1500 Check @onijekujelagos on Instagram for more

The food is nice, very comfortable environment and nice staff