The Metaphor Looks Better Than it Tastes
The Metaphor
NOSA: The first thing you notice as soon as you walk into The Metaphor is the space (Well, duh). It’s literally someone’s house that has been refurbished into a restaurant. It doesn’t totally do away with the house-y elements, however. The furniture, for starters, makes you feel like you went to visit an aunt somewhere in Lagos. I wonder what the story with the space is. Did the owners move to Banana Island or Lekki? Or maybe Canada?
FOLLY: Nah, you can’t tell me some people still don’t live in that house. I kept seeing a guy with EarPods walk in and out of the rooms. I think renting it out to other people would have been more profitable than the restaurant business (especially because based on my experience they aren’t very good at it)
NOSA: I guess the neighbourhood has gone beyond residential so this makes sense in some way. And they’ve really done a good job with the space. It really does feel like a home-turned-restaurant and I mean that in a very good way.
FOLLY: Good job with the space, but horrible at the food and experience.
NOSA: Yeah, that’s where all the good things about The Metaphor end, unfortunately. That home-turned-restaurant thing takes a terrible turn in the kitchen. They probably kept the cook from the previous residents and it shows. Ok, I don’t mean that literally but yeah, the food sucks. They definitely need all sorts of help in the kitchen.
FOLLY: And also in the service department, the waiters and waitresses are clueless.
NOSA: The food took forever. We stopped by just before “COB” and it turned dark before our first item came out. My main never even came out and the waitress told us it was “almost done” on our way out. For reference, I ordered a pasta and not some slow cooked goat tongue.
FOLLY: I should also add that the first couple of items Nosa ordered weren’t available.
NOSA: We probably could’ve stayed thirty more minutes without my main coming out. Folly’s did, thankfully. It wasn’t any good, but it came out so I guess I should be grateful for the little things.
The Loaded Fries were loaded… with onions.
FOLLY: Raw onions…
NOSA: It definitely could’ve been cheesier and a little less dry. It’s like the omelette the cook in your house makes, but sub the eggs for fries. The less said about it, the better.
FOLLY: I also think using rolled smoked ham in their loaded fries wasn’t the best idea.
NOSA: The less said about the “Penne Pesto”, the better too. But if we don’t say anything, we don’t really have content. So we’ll just have to trudge through it.
FOLLY: There was nothing pesto about this pesto. Like absolutely nothing, okay they shredded some basil in there.
NOSA: Last week, I put some peppers, onions and tomatoes in my pesto as some part of some weird experiment. Turned out disastrous, but I learned my lesson. The “Chef” at The Metaphor surely didn’t learn that lesson because he did the same exact thing and produced the same useless result. This is like the pasta your cook makes at home and when you’re not paying, you don’t complain much. It’s edible after all. When you’re paying for it, however, you tend to judge it with a different lens.
FOLLY: I mean some could argue that they attempted to combine a red pesto and a green pesto to make a Metaphor Pesto but I know for a fact that’s not what they were thinking, and they didn’t even have the right elements of either.
NOSA: Maybe they were going for a spicy pesto, but HSE does something similar and the pesto isn’t lost in the process. We couldn’t taste any pesto in The Metaphor’s version. Oh, and the pasta was slightly overcooked too. Pasta should be easiest thing that restaurant makes so I don’t get how they mess it up all the time.
POSTSCRIPT
FOLLY: It feels rushed giving them a review off two items but honestly I don’t think they’d do much better even if we ordered five times.
NOSA: I’m sure the Jollof is good, but I’d complain about paying 5k for jollof. Then again, I paid 2.5k for Ewa Agoyin so maybe I’m not the one to be saying this. That said, you can spend the same amount of money at BL or South, on the same street, and get more value. The Metaphor is a complete bust.
VERDICT
DAMAGE
Loaded Fried - N4000
Pesto Pasta - N6000
PARKING
On street parking mostly, wouldn’t be enough on a busy night.