My girlfriend and I recently checked out Kaya, the new restaurant in the Strip from the same people who brought us Mad Mex. It's sort of a new-age caribbean resaurant. Kaya sort of represents to caribbean what Mad Mex is for mexican, if that helps at all. The atmosphere (with the exception of the extremely noisy yuppie table next to us) was excellent. An absolutely beautiful restaurant. And as with Mad Mex, everything down to the plates (remade Fiesta Ware) are interesting. The service was very good. Our waitress stopped in to check on us quite often. Most of the food was quite tasty and interesting. Much of the menu comes in appetizer-size portions, in the $2.50-$4.50 range. Before going, a friend recommended that we order two or three appetizers a piece (in a Dim Sum sort of fashion, I suppose). This is probably good advice, but only if you aren't too hungry, as each dish is rather small. We started that way, found out we were still hungry, ordered more, and ended up eating almost $30 in appetizers. Not exactly the Mad Mex price range. As for what we ordered, I wholeheartedly recommend the Conch Fritters. Yum! The ratatuie (sp?) was also excellent (but small). The avacado ceasar salad wasn't very flavorful and was definately over-priced for what you get. The yuca fries were good, but very small in portion, as was the case with the pineapple quesadillas. (I think that's all we had, although I may be missing something.) The menu does have a few entrees (8 or so), which run in the $6.50-$10 range. Many of them sounded good, and I'd definately like to try this arrangement again, starting with an entree. Either that or do the happy-hour-type-thing, sitting at the bar with a good beer (they have plenty) and the Conch Fritters. On the whole, I liked much of the experience, but the portions seemed a bit small for the prices. I'd probably be there quite a bit if they upped the portion size for the price. As it is, I'll maybe hit the place every once in fairly long while (being on the grad school budget). Andy
Pittsburgh, PA
Kaya
Last night I decided to go to Kaya. Personal Impression: This resturant will not last in Pittsburgh in its current form. The food was good; but it was overpriced for what I would expect from the Mad Mex establishment. My girlfriend had two Tropos (appetizers that they try to sell you in leiu of an entree) and I had an entree and a beer which came out to $23. Atmosphere is nice... Madmexish, but with quieter music. They played what I would call latin music while we were there. Wait staff seems to have been taken from the two Mad Mexes. I recognized several of the folks there from Oakland and the North Hills. Food. I am not sure what the Tropas were. One was a salad, and the other was a quesadilla (sp?) with some pineapple. The salad was of decent size. My girlfriend wasn't overly fond of the flavor, though. Quesadillas are quesadillas are quesadillas.... however you spell them. I had the Calypso Pork. Came with sauteed greens and something else that was brown, but I forgot what they were. The pork was cooked well. Its sauce was similar to what the Honey Baked Ham company puts on their hams. THey needed to serve it with a steak knife. It was about 1-1 1/2 inches thick. The greens were edible. Not thrilled about these. The brown thing (consistency of refried beans) was edible... definitely not thrilled. Overall presentation was nice. To be honest, like I said, I don't see this place lasting in its current form. It needs a major menu rewrite to offer more entrees. Also, the price needs a slight change (maybe reduction by $1, or so, on all of the entrees and tropas (if they actually expect you to eat dinner off of the tropsas)). On a scale of 1-10, I'd rank this place a 6. I'm glad I went. But I don't see myself going there again anytime soon. Grant Lynde
I was dragged to Kaya (twice!) last weekend, and I generally agree with the previous comments. The food was generally unmemorable and somewhat overpriced. This may be by design, considering that I overheard one of the owners mention that they already have plans for three franchises (Shadyside, North Hills and South Hills). But I don't think that food has ever been central to their conception of a good restaurant. More important is the bar (the beer list is essentially identical to Mad Mex) and especially the atmosphere. The decor is quite stylish, the music a bit too loud, and the patrons to match. Whether or not this place succeeds will reveal a lot about what kind of town the Burgh is and will be. Christian
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------4D46D9F79B01603766E94D41 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Melissa C. wrote: > > I know that many of the posters on this bboard believe that Kaya is > overpriced and that the service is spotty, but I've always been very > happy with my dining experience. I was there for the first time last Saturday (the 19th). The food was fine but the service was HORRIBLE. First course, we ordered a salad and an ap of fried portabellas. It took 45minutes. Thats ridiculous. Dinner, which we ordered at the same time as the apps, came 25 minutes after that. Dinner more than an hour after being seated is ridiculous. I have to say I enjoyed my meal and the atmosphere was great. Our server was gracious but not as attentive as I would have liked. I sincerely believe that it was the kitchen's fault that everything was late. --------------4D46D9F79B01603766E94D41 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Drew Degentesh Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Drew Degentesh n: Degentesh;Drew org: Carnegie Mellon University adr: Department of Mechanical Engineering;;5000 Forbes Ave;Pittsburgh;PA;15213;USA email;internet: [email removed] title: Doctoral Candidate/Research Assistant tel;work: 412 268 3606 tel;fax: 412 268 3348 x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: FALSE end: vcard --------------4D46D9F79B01603766E94D41--
Drew D. wrote: > > Melissa C. wrote: > > > > I know that many of the posters on this bboard believe that Kaya is > > overpriced and that the service is spotty, but I've always been very > > happy with my dining experience. > > I was there for the first time last Saturday (the 19th). The food was > fine but the service was HORRIBLE. First course, we ordered a salad and > an ap of fried portabellas. It took 45minutes. Thats ridiculous. > Dinner, which we ordered at the same time as the apps, came 25 minutes > after that. Dinner more than an hour after being seated is ridiculous. > > I have to say I enjoyed my meal and the atmosphere was great. Our server > was gracious but not as attentive as I would have liked. I sincerely > believe that it was the kitchen's fault that everything was late. > > --------------------------------------------------------------- I was happy with a recent visit to Kaya, our first and only time there on 7/31 about 4:30 for an early dinner. The food was good and the service at that time was great. We only ordered appetizers and drinks as we were going to the Pirates game later; we had jerk chicken wings, chips with black bean dip and fries with cheese sauce, all very spicy and delicious. Our 10 and 6 yr old sons enjoyed the food too (sort of) so it was a success for us all the way. We did this instead of Primanti Bros. which we have been to several times.
My wife's and my favorite restaurant in Pgh is Kaya. We ate there last week for the first time in months. We ordered the tropical paella and the vegetable paella. They had changed the recipes. In my tropical paella, there we just a few small pieces of chicken, and the sausage was practically undetectable; They also cut back on the spices so that it was bland rice, bland calamari, and bland shrimp. My wife was also dissatisfied with her vegetable paella (sorry I didnt' query her about the exact nature of dissatisfaction). When we asked our waiter about this, he said, in a rather exasperated manner, that they had changed a lot of the recipes and the overwhelming opinion of the customers seemed to be negative. We'll give it one more try and order something else. But I am just curious whether anyone else has had simiar experiences. Kirk Pruhs