It was my sister-in-law's birthday today, and she chose to come here for lunch, so they made a booking for 6+1 baby. When we arrived, they had a table of six, but had completely discounted the baby factor, and after putting in the baby seat, it was a bit squished, and one person (ended up being me just for ease because I didn't really mind too much) was sitting at the end of the table in the main Ā through-fare of the restaurant.
The manager and servers were very friendly, and very patient in explaining the menu items since a lot of them were described with titles only, which not knowing much Greek food, we had to ask quite a bit.
The decor was fairly homely, dark colours, lots of busy items on the wall besides the kind of expected bottles of wine, preserved goods, tins of Greek goods, plus things like Hoplite helmets and wine barrels cut into being lamp shades. Ā Greek music going on in the background, moderate volume, not overpoweringly loud.
It being by the seaside at Brighton-Le-Sands, it had a nice gentle breeze through the front door that did make it quite refreshing.
We ordered a total of 8 dishes. Ā Pan fried cheese with honey, vegetable fritters, vine leaf wrapped rice, beetroot salad, lamb dish, chicken skewers, salmon, Ā and a moussaka. Ā I also ordered a Greek Coffee, and my wife a Greek Mountain Tea.
The food came out relatively quickly, portion sizes moderate. The starters were a bit of a mix. Vegetable fritters were pretty ordinary, on the bland side, and so were the vine leaves, the pan fried cheese was really good though, and the beetroot salad fairly standard, nothing terribly outstanding. It was enough for the six adults to share.
The coffee was strong, I did request two sugars which helped take the bitterness edge off, and it was a shot with grounds steeping, as I expected. It came with a small piece of the Greek equal of Turkish delight, which was quite nice as it had a delicate rose water flavour, but was not overly sweet and overpowered by the icing sugar.
The mains came out also fairly quickly too. Ā The chicken skewers were dry, pretty tasteless unfortunately. The lamb was nice, okay amount in terms of meat portion, could have done with more though. Both these dishes had pita bread and chips, with some yogurt based dip with dill in it. Without it for the lamb was fine, without the dip for the chicken made for not nice chicken.
The salmon was moist, reasonably cooked, though it still had a few bones. It didn't bother me, but it was unexpected since typically in dining such kinds of places, you'd expect a more thorough job in removing pin bones. Ā The salmon had a sundried tomato and cheese paste with capers, but the paste had turned into a blob, which didn't really cut easily, so you ended with fish without any of it, or a massive amount of it on each portion you cut. Ā The moussaka was not as eggplant as I thought, but still moderately nice. No complaints on that dish.
I think its better than average as far as a dining experience goes, however it wasn't exceptional. The combination of good solid service and atmosphere makes it a nice place to visit, but the dishes probably didn't do a great job of making Greek cuisine proud. Ā We saw on other tables platters of meat, banquet style, which they had barely touched which seemed like such a waste, but at $90 for two for a platter, its a hefty price tag. Ā For 6 adults, and 8 dishes, it was a total of $192 (rounded) which included 4 drinks (a beer, coffee, mountain tea, and lemon squash softdrink), which was $32/head, quite reasonable for what we had.
Would I come again on my own, probably not. Would I come on another occasion? Sure.
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