My wife and I recently found ourselves at Silver Star Casino. It was a blustery Saturday afternoon and we decided to sit down at the Ciao Baby Cucina in the Casino. The restaurant is very nicely outfitted with stylish interior décor and simple but elegant table settings. There is a sense of real style about the place but none of the all-too-common pomp and down-your-nose snobbishness I’ve seen so much of recently in up-scale restaurants. There’s a real sense of pride about the place, and we found that this pervaded our experience of the restaurant throughout our meal.

 

We were met at the entrance by the manager, Greg who welcomed us warmly and seated us at a great table inside with a view of the casino and the many pluggers dropping tokens into the slots. The restaurant sits perfectly balanced between the casino’s plush interior and the multi-million rand outdoor water fountain, and you can choose a table with a view of either.

 

After we were seated, we were quickly served by our waiter Henry. I have often experienced service in South Africa by waiters that have rote-learned their menus, but who have clearly never tasted any of their own food. This is often the fault of stingy restaurant policies that force their staff to eat staff-meals they would never dream of feeding their customers. This leads to a very weak understanding of what they offer. This is clearly not the case at Ciao Baby Cucina. Henry showed a clear grasp of the tastes, textures and values of the many different offerings on his menu and he slowly and carefully walked us through it and his specials of the day, and helped us choose between them.

 

Ciao Baby Cucina is a classic Italian restaurant and has an extensive and varied menu with anti-pasta, salads, pasta, pizza, meat and fish dishes to suit every taste. I started with a classic Beef Carpaccio, while my wife had a salad. The starters were light and tasty, the Carpaccio was fresh and unusually, but deliciously, served with mustard, which I had never seen before, but will certainly ask for again.

 

Surprisingly Henry was very happy to take our starter orders, and to serve us our starters, before we considered our main course. This is unusual in South Africa where many waiters are not happy to break from their normal ritual of taking all the orders at once. But Henry’s willingness to give us some space and time to digest our starters before ordering our mains was a welcome surprise.

 

For the main course I ordered an Italian favourite of mine: Veal Limone, while my wife went for the seafood pasta special. The food came quickly and was delicious. My veal was wonderfully thin and tender, cooked in a crumb batter and anointed with a tart lemon sauce. It came with a selection of mixed vegetables and a starch of my choice, in this instance: chips. The flavours of the veal, lemon and the sides all complimented each other wonderfully and the meal was perfectly proportioned to fill me up and leave me satisfied and happy.

 

The only problem with my meal was the slight order-envy I experienced at tasting my wife’s rich pasta. The dish was spicy and contained many mouth-watering flavours and a generous portion of actual seafood including mussels, calamari and prawns.

 

Henry paid us plenty of attention during the meal and made sure we were always topped up with drinks and happy as can be. My wife drank wine with her meal and we were both presently surprised by the large carafe she received which gave her a glass and a half of a fine South African red. A real wine connoisseur, she was very excited by the restaurant’s extensive wine menu and she absolutely loved the one she chose. Greg, the manager, also stopped by to make sure everything was all right and we heartily assured him it was.