ạtė

May 22, 2025

ạtė is an intimate fine dining restaurant located along Kyuna Crescent in Westlands. Founded in 2019, this restaurant is a mix of charm and elegance with a touch of eclectic vibes all the while taking you on a most interesting culinary journey.

This beautiful house turned restaurant has a stunning garden that you can see as you drive in. There is ample outdoor seating out in the garden or in the main restaurant as well as upstairs on the terrace. Each location is outfitted differently from the other but somehow the decor still flows cohesively well. My favourite part is the garden because I love how magical it gets by dusk with the light wind blowing against the trees and the string lights twinkling against the night sky (I’m a hopeless romantic at heart guys, I just have to act gangsta out here to survive)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand - the food. The menu is a fun one with lots of interesting dishes like shaved calamari in tomato butter (who knew there was tomato butter??) and a Bloody Mary risotto amongst so many others. After seeing this menu and getting excited for what I’d like to try… the waiter comes back to tell us that since it was a Wednesday, we can only order from their Italian menu as Wednesday is Italian night at ạtė.

Now usually this wouldn’t be an issue because what I wanted to order anyway was a pasta dish so I figured that would be fine… BUT the particular pasta I wanted wasn’t on the Italian themed menu. This limited menu had like only 4 items to choose from and nothing on there was as appealing as the Sophia Loren pasta dish that was on their main menu.

If Wednesdays are themed Italian nights… it would have been ideal for them to inform us of that first before giving us the main menu, letting us read through it, make our choices only for them to come back and say actually… syke!?? Seriously. Then you give us a menu that has very few options to choose from?? Not okay.

I informed the waiter of my frustrations with this and he said there’s nothing they can do because the kitchen only has ingredients to make items off the Italian menu. My friend was ready to leave after that lol, she wasn’t willing to do the back and forth so she asked to pay for her glass of wine and we’ll go dine elsewhere. This clearly scared them so our waiter went back into the kitchen and had a word with the chef and low and behold… apparently they CAN make the other dishes from the main menu.

The chef said it was their mistake for not informing us of the Italian themed night at the get when we walked in so he was willing to make an exception and make us some very tasty pasta dishes. I had the Sophia Loren pasta (w/chicken KSH 2100) and my friend had the mushroom and truffle ragu tortellini (KSH1900) and we had tiramisu (KSH1400) for dessert. We got started off with some fresh focaccia bread, I LOVE focaccia so much, I could eat a whole plate but I didn’t because we had to save room for the pasta.

The reason I wanted to try the Sophia Loren is because I’ve heard a lot of people say good things about this dish and it’s their most popular dish. Upon tasting it I understood why - that was some bomb ass pasta! It’s a tagliatelle pasta with cashew pesto, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes + fresh parmesan. I added some grilled chicken to it and that first bite was heaven in my mouth! So creamy, so tasty, so indulgent. So good! Can’t believe they wanted to deny me that wonderful dish.

The truffle ragu tortellini was also very tasty. I liked how light the pasta itself was because stuffed pasta can be quite dense but this one was so fresh and airy, and the mushroom truffle ragu mixed in it, topped off with more Parmesan… delicious! Italians really knew what they were doing when they decided to create all sorts of pasta.

The tiramisu was a lie. That was definitely not a tiramisu but a very decadent chocolate cake with a wonderful layer of butter cream within it and topped off with a layer of nuts - which I’m gonna guess were hazelnuts but I’m not too sure. Why was this ‘tiramisu’ KSH1400??? Ruto must go please! It was just a sliver of a cake, if I hadn’t had so much pasta there’s no way I’d have been satisfied with the size of that cake especially for that price.

That aside - it was very yummy! That chocolate was rich! But they need to stop calling that tiramisu, it did not have a lick of coffee in it and that price… whewww! Maybe the ingredients were flown in from Italy because I don’t know how else they can justify that price. Aside from the menu snafu - the service here was good and the servers were not a miss on anything else.

ạtė in general is a culinary delight, an expensive one but an enjoyable one. Definitely come here ready to spend the coins. It’s a perfect place for date nights, for a nice chill drinks plan with a few friends and also great for events if you’re looking for intimate spaces with great ambience and plenty of outdoor seating.

Reservations are highly recommended here and I would suggest you don’t drive as they have limited parking spots.