Another post revisiting an established, but rather good, Cardiff restaurant.

I am not a great fan of New Years Eve. It is all to often an excuse for places to ramp up the prices (and regrettably sometimes ramp down quality). It is also one of those enforced jollity times, which rather gets my goat. A “You must have fun on this night” to which my response it “why?”

I recall many years ago Mrs. SF and I spent New Year on an island in Thailand (Koh Lanta). Whilst there I would have much rather spent NYE at a rather good (and cheap) beach bar we had found just down the beach from our hotel (where the hotel staff often ate), but the hotel charged you for its “NYE banquet” whether you attended or not (which pee’d me off no end). Having accepted we had to go (as I paid for it and it wasn’t cheap), we thought just the two of us and a nice romantic meal in a lovely place would actually be a pleasant way to see in the New Year (with a stroll on the beach at the turning of the year).

It all got off to a rather disastrous start with 1 corked bottle of wine and then two badly oxidised ones (I tried in vain to explain the issues regarding each bottle to the waiter and then the manager, giving up eventually on any hope of a decent bottle and settled on beer – actually the sensible option in Thailand then as duty on foreign wine was at the time ruinously high and the local wines were “interesting” and I don’t mean that in a good way) and got worse as then a large group of “merchant bankers” decided to enforce their NYE jollity on us with a “Oh you must join up” and wouldn’t take no (despite it being repeatedly said by me) for an answer. I suppose they meant well, but to the introvert in me it was about as welcome an offer as a pork chop at a bar mitzvah.

Mrs. SF and I as a rule don’t tend to go big on NYE, but this year we were invited out to lunch (suits me way better than dinner on that day – apart from anything else it is easy to get back home at that time before the Uber algorithm goes exponential), with a rather enticing and not overly spenny menu (for NYE) at Casanova (one of my favourite restaurants in Cardiff City centre).

The online menu looked very promising

and six of us, therefore, decided to book in for an NYE lunch.

When we arrived it transpired that the menu on offer was a slightly truncated one.

Not sure if this was for lunch and the online one was for dinner or they had just reduced it across the board.

Whilst I was a tad disappointed that the online seared tuna and crab dish had disappeared (I did rather like the sound of it) this disappointment was rather tempered by the resultant £25 reduction in price. Being a tight arsed git those sort of things do please me.

Back to what was rather than wasn’t on the menu, we started off proceedings with a cicchetti in the form of a pastry cone filled with a whisky cured smoke salmon and cream cheese

I was worried the salmon was sliced a tad thick, but is had a good (dryish) texture and a nice flavour (a light peaty smokiness) which worked well with the slight tang of the cream cheese. My only minor criticism was that the pastry had gone a little bit soggy at the top (presumably they had been made a job lot in advance).

The cicchetti came with a glass of prosecco, which was OK. I am not a huge fan of fizz and if going Italian I much prefer the more classically made franciacorta to prosecco. This stuff was OK, if a bit bland for my tastes.

Next up was a well made risotto,

with the aged carnaroli (a step up from arborio in my opinion) rice cooked so it was nicely plumped up with just a touch of bite and no chalkiness.  Good creamy texture from the rice starch and the right (to me) level of consistency, being not too soupy nor not too sticky. Good flavour to the tomato that infused the rice and it had a nice sweetness to it, which complimented the 3 juicy (properly de-veined, much to Mrs SF’s relief) grilled king prawns.  Decent portion size to this too.

If I see a lamb dish on a menu I nearly always choose it and thus I was very happy to see it here. Nice mix of fast cooked (nicely pink) rump and a slow cooked bit of shoulder. Both beautifully tender in their own way, the lamb was well flavoured with a touch of herbiness. The shoulder bested the more expensive rump in my opinion.

A good, rich, but not over reduced, jus with a touch of sweetness (bit of masala in there, I wonder) added nicely to the mix as did a silky but not overly sweet pumpkin puree and some every so slightly bitter (in a good way) cavolo nero. Good centre piece dish this.

A slightly weird cheese course followed.

It wasn’t that it wasn’t nice, with pleasingly nutty comte cheese and a rather lovely piece of wine poached pear but….  The oddities regarding this dish were firstly the use of French cheese and secondly the paucity of and boring nature of the cracker provision.

I mean it is not as if Italy doesn’t have a boat load of cheeses (both hard and soft) to choose from, with fontina a potential comté substitute, so why have a French one? Also just two plain old water biscuits is a bit mean and didn’t exactly wow. Why not some pane carasau or something of that ilk?

Pudding followed, in the form of a torta di Melassa (treacle tart to you and me), and this was really very good indeed.

On the top was a lovely yoghurt ice cream, which had a great tanginess to it, which acted as a very pleasing counterpoint to the slab of rich oaty brown sugariness it sat on. A bountiful amount of crushed toasted hazelnuts added a welcome textural contrast. There was some disagreement as to the leaves on top, I thought them red sorrel (logical based on their lemony flavour) but we were told it was baby beetroot leaves (bit odd with a dessert, I thought).

Wine wise they have a very good list, which is more a booklet. It has good tasting notes and details as to the wines on offer and helpfully it puts stuff into sections so you get an idea of overall style before going into more detail regarding specific wines.

We started off with a falaghina sannio, which had a nice level of acidity and crisp apple and pear on the nose and palate. Worked well with the cicchetti and the risotto. Reasonable (if not stellar) value at £38.

With the lamb and cheese, we went red with a couple of bottles of bolgheri Agapanto (a cab franc/cab sauv. blend)

Nice nose, heady with red fruit that  followed through on the palate. Touch young perhaps, with tannins on the firmer side, but the food worked well in softening its more angular edges. Again not bad value for the £48 price tag.

On the wine front the one thing the list seemed to be missing was a few sweeties, which is odd as it is not as if Italy doesn’t have a surfeit of such wines. Think Vin Santo, Recioto de Soave, Recioto della Valpolicella and Moscato to name but a few.

With the cheese and the treacle tart I think one or a combination of these would have worked a treat.

The verdict

All to often NYE meals disappoint, but I thought the quality to value ratio here was good regardless of the date.

Six of us (with a tip and plenty of wine) paid £477.40,

which equated to £79.56 each. I think that is pretty good value (for what we had wine and booze wise) any day of the week let alone on the notoriously gougy NYE.

Casanova is one of those ever reliable restaurants that rarely, if ever, lets you down (I have never had a bad meal there) and it is (in my humble opinion) well worth a visit/revisit in 2026, which is undoubtedly going to be another really hard year for hospitality (with more and more cost loaded on to the already seriously creaking back of the hospitality industry – staw and camel comes to mind).

We book ended the meal with visits to another old favourite in the form of Curado.

Sherry snifter before 

and more cheese (plus red wine) after.

which took me to a time when I could semi respectfully dib out and come home to see in the New Year with Dick the Dog (who is lucky not bothered by fireworks, bane of many pet owners and which seem to have been a constant night time theme since Diwali back in October, at all).

The details

Address: 13 Quay Street, Cardiff, CF10 1EA

Website: https://casanovacardiff.uk/