Casamigo, Thiruvananthapuram — The place that gave me chorizo feelings

I’d driven past Casamigo before I ever ate there. You notice it from the street — the Spanish theme isn’t contained to the interior, it’s on the outside too, and it’s distinctive enough that you clock it from an auto and think, I’ll go there sometime. Eventually I did. It was also highly rated on Google Maps, which helped, but honestly it was the exterior that planted the seed.

Casamigo is barely 700 square feet. Four tables. White trellis walls with a botanical print wallpaper — green leaves, very clean, very European — and fake vines that crawl all the way up to the ceiling. When you walk in, it genuinely feels like someone dropped a Spanish bistro into Trivandrum and nobody questioned it. Magical fairy Spanish themed place is exactly the right description and I’m not taking it back.

I went alone, which is exactly how I wanted to go.

Eating alone means the bread is entirely mine. It means I can order whatever I want without negotiating, eat at my own pace, and actually focus on what things taste like instead of managing a conversation. I got sauce all over my face and didn’t care even slightly. That’s the dream. A solo date where the only person you have to please is yourself, and yourself wants crispy chicken in a smoky sauce.

It was quiet when I went. Three tables taken, no pressure, just the hum of the AC and a fan doing its job. They lay down a sheet of paper on the table before you sit — not strictly necessary because the place is genuinely clean, but it signals that someone thought about the details. The water came in a champagne flute. I don’t know why. I didn’t ask. It was delightful.

The iced tea was ₹120 — lemony, green tea, very minty, properly cold. Then, before the food arrived, they brought bread. Little hard crusty pieces with almond butter, just included, no charge. This is not a thing that happens in India. You go to Red Lobster in America, you get the biscuits. Olive Garden, you get the bread. Here it’s not customary. So when Casamigo quietly placed free bread on the table I felt genuinely moved. The hardness is part of the charm. You spread the butter, you use it to mop up sauce later. It earns its place. And because I was alone, I didn’t have to share any of it.

The Escamigo chicken — that’s what they call it — was ₹240, the most affordable entrée on the menu. A chicken breast, pounded thin, battered, fried. Crispy, not greasy, flaky in the way that good fried chicken is flaky. Not a bite of it was dry. It came swimming in a sauce that was smoky and spicy and tasted, unexpectedly, like chorizo.

I haven’t had chorizo since moving to India. I didn’t realise I missed it until it showed up in a sauce in a 700-square-foot café in Trivandrum. The sauce ran a little hot for me — I am, at heart, still very American about spice — but the chicken itself was completely unseasoned, so you control how much sauce you take. Elegant solution.

The thing about places that are obviously Instagram-optimised is that you brace yourself for the food to be an afterthought. Casamigo is not that. The food is genuinely, surprisingly good. The aesthetic and the cooking are both doing their jobs, which is rarer than it should be.

Budget roughly ₹400 if you’re eating properly. Go alone if you can.