Apple Pie @ Marquise, Glyfada

Yesterday, after late lunch, we went for a late coffee in Glyfada. It was almost 8 o'clock in the evening.

After a walk we ended up again in Zisimopoulou Street, but this time we avoided Haagen Dazs and found a table in a cafeteria/restaurant called Marquise.

There was a quite lot of people in Zisimopoulou, but when we arrived, we could still find a table easily, but those who arrived later had some difficulty. It was good to see people still go out in Saturday evening.

We were looking for something sweet, so we had a apple pie served with ice cream and caramel sauce (6.20 Euro).

It was a decent sized cut of apple pie. I prefer the apple to be cut smaller, but I appreciated it because it did not look like mass-production. Vanilla ice cream also was pretty good and di not have unpleasant after-taste of low quality cream. I found the price tug of 6.20 Euro well reasonable.

We had also one large cappuccino (5 Euro; if I remember well, a normal cappuccino was 4). I do not have nothing particular to write about the cappuccino, but should mention that it was served with two slices of chocolate cake. Again, I found it good-value-of-money in this high-street of Glyfada.

We might come back for club sandwich or something next time.

MARQUISE
Zisimopoulou & Lazaraki 45
Glyfada
http://www.marquise.gr/

On leaving Zisimopoulou, I noticed Kayak has opened a huge shop at the corner. I think I overheard that it opened 3 months or so ago.

Apart from their well-known ice cream, they were selling also frozen yoghurt. There was a quite lot of people buying goodies.

Speaking about frozen yoghurt, I also have to mention that an impressive number of frozen yoghurt shops have opened in Glyfada. Probably we walked in front of 6 or 7 of these this time. How many of these survive the winter, I wondered.

Cheese Burger @ Colibri in Mets

GH told me that he wanted to eat a hamburger. I started a search around the web and I picked one in Athens and one in Glyfada leaving him to choose between them. And he picked up the one in Athens, called Colibri.

It is probably the most talked-about & blogged hamburger shop in Athens. I listed some of the posts I found below.

The place is just behind the Temple of Olympian Zeus, but not in the area where tourists go, if not on purpose.

This is how it looks from outside. It is basically a take-out/ delivery shop which have 5 or 6 tables on the pedestrian street in front. So, if you go there during peak hours, there is a good chance that you have to wait for a table or take-out burgers and shit down somewhere else.

We found a table because it was before 8 o'clock and it was a bit rainy (only 2 or the tables in the photo are covered by some sort of roof.

The menu consists in beef (veal?) and chicken burgers, pizze, salads, and "biftekia" (burgers or meat patties without bread).

The drinks came immediately. Beers are about 3 Euro and soft drinks are 1.50 Euro. A small bottle of water is 0.50 Euro. Very reasonably priced. They can give you free water in pitcher if you request (we did not, but I saw other people do). The beer in the below photo is Erdinger White Beer.

On the other hand, the burgers took ages - no, not really, it was about 20 min, I think - to come. It was intriguing because there were not many patrons (6 or 7) and there seemed at least 4 men in the kitchen. The delivery movement also was very slow (it happened only twice during 1 hour we were there). I am not sure they are always slow or there was something wrong on that particular evening.

The first impression of my cheese burger was not great (6.60 Euro). Maybe because it looked quite different from the burgers I saw on the fellow bloggers' websites.

In taste wise, of course, it was quite good.

The burger was rather thin, but was also quite large in diameter. The thing I liked very much in this burger was that the good equilibrium and combination of soft buns, crunchy iceberg lettuce, tender and lean patty, and the chili sauce I asked to add (no additional cost).

The potatoes were skin-on type and not freshly fried.

GH got a Bacon & Cheese Burger and he also was happy.

The total cost was 18.80 Euro.

If you get fancier burger, the cost shall rise above 10 per person.

Overall, we were happy with the meal, but this is not the area we usually move around and the unpredictability of table availability shall work as a deterrent.

This, of course, does not mean that I do not recommend this place to you. If you like burgers, you should try.

Colibri
Αναπαύσεως 9, Μετς-Παγκράτι
Τηλ. 210 9214277
18:00-00:30.

----------------

After I came back to home, I noticed that on the web, there are Colibri with another address. I wondered if the shop moved at some point, but in the end, this website cleared my doubt.

http://www.culinarybackstreets.com/athens/colibri/

Evidently there are three Colibri in Athens, one in Pangrati, one in Ano Petralona, and the one in Mets where we went.

And here are the list of admirers of Colibri on the web:

http://www.athensmagazine.gr/portal/restaurants/businesses/3164
http://www.spottedbylocals.com/athens/colibri/
http://onathens.blogspot.gr/2011/03/colibri-round-two.html
http://www.mysecretathens.gr/2011/12/colibri/
http://myathensfoodndrink.blogspot.gr/2011/06/best-pizza-in-athens-check.html

Bollywood Kitchen @ Thissio

We visited a new Indian restaurant in Thissio called Bollywood Kitchen at the end of August. It was a full moon day and there were so many people were around.

The restaurant is on a small side road called Thissiou. If you are walking down Adrianou Street, you need to look for it, because it is not much visible from the central street.

Inside is very simple, almost austere. Only the Bollywood films on a flat screen and the "Indian" (I don't know if they are from India, Pakistan, or even Bangladesh) cooks in the kitchen remind you that it is an Indian restaurant.

The menu isn't long, but all the classics are there. For the curry, there are various sauces and you can choose which meat you want to be put into your sauce. The price changes according to which meat you choose.

Papadom was offered for free.

GH got a beer and I got a mango lassi.

The vegetable samosas were nice and plenty.

Judging from the form of skin, I thought these should be house-made.

These were all right. I just think that they should sell samosas one by one. If you are in a group of 4, you don't know how to devide and if you are in two like us, three samosas are just too many to eat before the main dishes.

The salad was odd.

Apart from lettuce and cucumber, there were half-cooked green peas. Not the best combination I have ever tasted.

Then to the main dishes.

This is lamb masala that came in a bright red color, which can only be explained with artificial food dye (I think it is the same dye they use for tandoori chicken).

The sauce was fine (except that I sensed too much sugar), but the hard and small bits of lamb were disappointing.

I got palak paneer (curry of spinach and Indian cottage cheese).

I expected paneer in it, but to my surprise, the cheese was salty. It tasted suspiciously similar to feta cheese. The sauce itself was ok, but the cheese was very disappointing.

Cheese naan.

Here we expected yellow gooey cheese, but what we found was again feta (you don't see it in the photo, but it was inside). It was fine, but it again betrayed our expectation.

Pilau rice, however, was quite good, with lots of spice and caramelized onion.

The final bill got close to 40 Euro. The price-wise, it is all right, but I want the food to be of better standard.

In any case, recently Bollywood Kitchen is offering 50% deal coupons on many website. If you are interest, buy one of these and go. If you pay 20 for all these, you cannot regret much.

Bollywood Kitchen
7 Thissiou & Adrianou
Thissio, Athens
Tel: 211-4019197

Parmigiani @ Passalimani, Piraeus

One Saturday afternoon, we decided we wanted to eat Italian, but not far from our flat.

So I called an Italian place called Mafioso which is about 10 min walk and is getting good reviews on the web. But the woman who answered the phone told me that we could go to their new restaurant on Passalimani, called Parmigiani, because it is at a better location.

And there we went.

The place above does not say much, but they have several tables on the seaside walk of Passalimani. They serve food as well as cafeteria stuff.

When we arrived, about half of the tables were occupied, but most of them were only having coffees. The problem was that there was only one waitress for all the tables and, as in other places of Passalimani, she had to cross the street all the time from the shop to the tables. And the worst was that she was not willing to do it much.

The menu consists of not-to-complicated appetizers, some salads, pizze, pasta, some (other) main dishes, and desserts. The emphasis is on pizze and pasta that are very reasonably priced.

To the waitress who insisted to speak in English while we spoke to her in Greece, we placed the order.

We got Insalata alla Caprese as starter, which came with a big place of bread that we did not order. I don't like the place that automatically brings the bread, while we order starches for main. I do not eat spaghetti with bread, although I know that there is a plenty of people who do; they could have asked me, couldn't they?

And the waitress forgot to bring us water till this point. She brought us two glasses, but forgot again to bring the beer for GH, even though he reminded her together with the water.

The salad was all right, anyway.

The main dishes arrived in not more than 5 min. No beer, though. So he reminded her again.

GH got a pizza. I think it was called Pizza della casa or something; it was a pizza with everything-anything you can think of, just as the Greek people tend to like their pizza.

Frankly speaking it tasted rather boring, due to, I think, poor quality of cheese. The dough was a bit too charred to my taste.

I got a plate of Spaghetti all'Amatriciana.

This came in a big portion and tasted quite good. The spaghetti were cooked to the right degree of "al dente".

The beer did not materialize until the last and the waitress disappeared inside the shop completely.

GH had to go inside the shop to pay. Then, he had to point again to that waitress that she failed to bring him the beer, and she was like ... "Oops". Nothing else. We had a receipt on the table, but the waitress had to take it to check he ordered the beer with it and later she just confiscated it.

The price was like 20 Euro for two (without beer!), so quite reasonable. But GH swore that he would not come back to the place that did not give him enough water to drink.

A shame.

Parmigiani
Akti Moutsopoulou 11, Piraeus.
(I don't know the phone number of the place, as they did not give me the receipt).

Change of Look

If you are reading this post with your PC, you must have noticed that I changed the template. 

Not that I wanted to change, but I did not have much choice. 

I used to use a widget called a comment system called JS-Kit, because in some years back, the comment system of Google Blogger was really crappy (you might not be able to believe me, but in the earlier years, Blogger itself was quite crappy and I used to blog mostly on Opera community which was working perfectly then) and it was now workable. JS-Kit was a better solution, but now the company owns the software decided to kill the widget. 

https://sites.google.com/site/echocomments/

I tried to remove it from the template, but it looked to be too much into it and it was too much for me to do so. It looked safer to change the template at all. 

I am sorry to lose the comments on JS-Kit, but they were to be lost from October anyway. There was not much I could do. 

I hope that Blogger has improved the commenting system meanwhile (but, to be honest, I don't receive many comments fortunately - Not that I don't like the comments, but I do not have time to take good care of them, sorry!). 

Asty 68 @ Gazi

This Thursday evening, I was in Gazi, waiting for GH who was stuck in the traffic caused by a demonstration in Syntagma Square (yes, it has started again). We were supposed to go to a concert at Technopolis, but after 2 hours of drive for him and 2 hours of wait for me, we were hardly in the mood/state of going to the concert. (Note: In usual circumstances, it should have taken about 30-40 min from Maroussi and Thissio).

When we finally met about 9:15, we decided to go to eat something nice at least. So, I took him to Asty 68, of which I have read good reviews.

It is really a small restaurant and the number of the tables where you can heat is pretty limited (additionally there are also some other small tables and bar stools, as it is a bar, too).

I shot this photo toward a corner where there was no body, but the place was already half full and later it got 80% full.

Above reminds me of some scenes from David Lynch movies.

The menu is rather short; I think there were about 25 items in total (from appetizers, salad to main) and some desserts. To be honest, the prices are on higher side - you should judge if it is reasonably high or not by yourself.

There are no cheap starters (Orektica) that you can get for 3 or 4 Euro as in usual Greek tavernes (probably because this place is not trying to become a taverna), so we did not order any. We just got bread (1 Euro per person).

The bread, however, was served with yoghurt+red beets dip and oil+balsamic vinegar dip. The bread itself was also very edible, grilled and sprinkled with sea salt, olive oil and oregano.

With the bread, we were also offered a shot of vegetable potage soup as amuse-bouche. Very good.

This is green salad with walnuts, dried apricot (this was supposed to be dried plum which was out of stock on the day), and talagani cheese on top.

Nice combination, but the amount of dressing was just too much. 7.30 Euro.

We did not want to order 2 main dishes (we cannot usually eat one main dish per a head). Here is the problem of this restaurant for us; there are only a few half-portion (meze) size dishes to achieve our ideal 1.5 portion between us two. One possibility was this: a bowl of oven baked potatoes, and the other was a combination of dips (taramosalata, aubergine something and another).

Potatoes were fine, but I did not know that we were to get the same as a side of the main course. I always think that the waiter should either tell us (when it is not written on the menu, and it wasn't written) or offer something else as side.

4.30 Euro for the potatoes.

Here is the main dish: biftekakia with yogurt & herb sauce.

The portion of dish is not large by Greek standard, if not small. The quality of meat, however, was pretty good and they were as if the wel-made biftekakia at home. 9.80 Euro.

You believe or not, we were full at this point and there was not space for dessert (there are 3 desserts, if I remember well, and sounded interesting).

However, with the bill we got a shot of rakomelo and mastiha ("submarine").

With a large glass of beer (4.50 Euro), the bill was 27.90 Euro and we left 30. If you order 1 starter (salad), 2 main, 2 desserts, and 2 glasses of beer, expect to pay about 20-25 Euro per a head.

And we got the fiscal receipt without any fuss.

I am not sure if this restaurant is suitable for the way I eat, I would be more than happy to try other dishes.

Asty 68 (Άστυ 68)
Leoforos Konstantinoupoleos 68, Gkazi
Tel. 210-346 6896

Around 22:30 we went to the concert and left after half an hour. The music was good, but were were just too tired and it was only Thursday.

A shame.

Glyfada Update

So, some updates about Glyfada.

Saints Constantine and Helen is ... as usual.

The first thing I did was to check the Konstantinopoleos Street, also known as Biftekoupoli. The ever changing street.

First I passed in front of Pagotomania. A middle-aged woman who looked like the owner, was chatting with young male waiters... lying. Yes, she was lying on her back. You say that the Greeks are relaxed people, but this is definitely too far.

Biftekaatsi, where we ate once, is still there.

In front of Biftekaatsi, I found a new restaurant called Mavro Provato.

It was closed when I passed in front, so I don't know what sort of place it is.

Then, I saw in the former premises a new outlet of Golden Phoenix, small chain of Chinese restaurants.

I thought Golden Phoenixes are pricey restaurants, but this place offers buffet for 16 Euro.

Then we walk towards Zisimopoulou Street. On our way, we saw patisserie-cafeteria Alea disappeared. It was replaced by a cafeteria.

We ended up in Haagen Dazs, where we are always able to find place.

Very expensive in current Greece. It offers any coffee for 3 Euro only during the daytime Monday-Friday. The target, obviously, is not the people in regular employment of 9 to 5.

Haagen Dazs @ Glyfada

[Post scriptum 13 April 2013: This venue does not exist any more]

After several months we came back to Glyfada.

I don't remember when was the last time we came here and don't know why we were away so long time. But now that I think, maybe because GH got very tired to run to and fro between Piraeus and Voula in spring when his father got hospitalized in Asklepeio.

Now in Glyfada, some shops closed down and some new opened. Still not many people around. I see that many are still in vacation.

We stopped at Haagen Dazs in Zisimopoulou street. Freddo cappuccino is still at the pre-crisis level of 4.60 euro. Frappe 4.10. But at least here the service is good.