Suzanna @ Palaio Faliro

I intended to visit this place for a long time and finally made it on a Friday evening of September. It serves Lebanese & Politiki (Constantinopolitan) food and it is not one of these new Lebenese that opened in half a dozen recently.

We arrived there at 22:30 and the place was half full. More precisely, most of the tables in outdoor space were occupied while the indoor tables were empty except for one.

It is a small restaurant, but the space between the tables is large and we did not felt to be in a crowd.

The bottled water on the table was served without any request on our part, costing us 1 Euro.

The menu is not long. The food is divided in 3 parts: cold appetizers (which includes salads), warm appetizers, and main dishes. Fish is not served, and the vegetarians do not find any choice except for Falafel as main dish.

We ordered 3 appetizers and 1 main dish, with a bottle of beer (3 Euro for beer seems reasonable).

Lots of warm handmade mini-pitas were served together with appetizers.

This is Ezme, which is finely chopped tomato, radish, parsley and chili. Simply it might be, perfectly prepared. Thumb up.

Another cold appetizer was babaganoush. Similar to melitzanosalata, except for the presence of tahini. Red dots are pomegranate.

The aubergine had good smokey flavor and we did like it. Perfect with pita bread.

GH wanted pastourmadopitakia, so here you are.

These are fried rolls oriental yufka pastry, with the filling of pastorma and yellow cheese. Again good, but I liked better those I ate at another restaurant in Palaio Faliro, Avli. Nonetheless fine.

As main dish we ordered Kebab ala Suzanna.

I found the meat a bit too dry, but loved the flavor of meat and abundant spice. But if you prefer soft kebabs (that I dislike), you might not like these.

No fruits or desserts were offered at the end, but they have cheap desserts starting from a scoop of ice cream for 1.50 Euro. We were, however, too full at this point.

The total bill was 26.50 Euro. For the quality of the food, I found it reasonable enough.

The only thing I did not like was that the service was somehow slow, due to lack of manpower. There was only one serving staff and at some points she was struggling.

I would happy to return, but would avoid busy hours.

Suzanna
Chariton 5 & Orfeos, Palaio Faliro, Athens
Χαρίτων 5 και Ορφέως, Π. Φάληρο
Tel.210-9428129.

Adonis @ Nea Smyrni

In a weekday afternoon, GH and I met up in Nea Smyrne for a coffee to kill time until start of the movie that we were planning to see with a couple of friends.

Plateia Neas Smyrnis is one of the most convenient places for coffee. The huge piazza/park is surrounded by a couple of dozens of cafeterias and ice cream shops. There is a plenty of choices.

On that day, we stopped at Adonis which I believe is one of the institutions of Nea Smyrni. There is another outlet just above Mikrolimano of Piraeus.

It is situated at the 1st floor of the building of which the ground floor is occupied by Flocafe. If you are not careful, you won't find it.

We were seated at one of the tables in the piazza, but also the indoor tables are quite nice having a view to the piazza.

In the menu, a coffee was priced around 4 Euro, but there was this offer when we visited and we paid only 3.50 Euro p.p.

Not quite clear when this offer is valid as it is not written, but I suppose it is a permanent thing, as this sheet was filed in the menu folder as well as shown in plastic stands on each table.

There was also an offer for beers.

When we ordered coffee, the waiter asked us if we wanted sweet or savoury. We did not quite get him (when we placed the order, we were not aware of the offer) and he explained that we could choose between cake and sandwich as a complement.

The cake turned out to be a very small piece of sponge which is laughable because many cafeterias offer better cakes without pretending anything.

As this place is also a restaurant, we might go there again, when we want to order sandwich, because restaurant-cafeterias offer better sandwich than pure cafeterias.

Adonis-Άδωνις
25ης Μαρτίου 11, Νέα Σμύρνη
http://adonisrestaurantcafe.com/

And afterwards, we went to see the movie Pacific Rim.

If I say that it is about a series of combats between Transformers and Aliens, I think I give you a pretty good idea. If it is what you want (and anything else), you will enjoy it as we did.

Kouzoulo @ Kifissia

I do not know why, but Blogger again removed the function to select the size of the photos. Shame.

Early September, GH and I went to a Cretan restaurant in Kifissia called Kouzoulo. I found a discount coupon on internet and, as I had wanted to try this place for some time, I bought it.

We went there on a Friday evening by car; the road was quite congested and the parking wasn't easy.

The address is "Δραγούμη & Ανδριανού 28", so we walked along Adrianou street without being able to find it. But eventually figured out that it is above this luxurious (Kifissian style) Grigoris, and the entrance is Dragoumi Street side.

It is just in front of ISAP (aka Metro No. 1) station.

Inside is modern taverna style. I wouldn't really call it a restaurant as a waitress and a cook were walking and smoking, while the guy who looked like the manager was working with his laptop at one of the tables.

I think the fact that it does not have any outdoor seating space is a big minus to attract Greek clientele in warm seasons.

Bread is served with olives and olive oil and you are charged 1.50 Euro p.p. And we did not manage to eat bread almost at all.

I wanted to order stamnagathi, but there wasn't. So this is a simple Greek salad. 7 Euro. It was a pretty large bowl, enough to share among 3 people at least.

Sarikopitakia from "pites (pies)" section. The filling was ksinomizithra cheese and topped with honey. 7. Euro.

Pretty good. Very filling. 7 Euro.

This is pork afelia from meze section. 8.50 Euro.

The sauce was tasty and had a good flavour. However the meat had quite a lot of fat and gristle. Not sure if it was the right cut.

GH wanted to eat spaghetti (I do not know why he wanted to eat spaghetti in a Cretan restaurant, but, whatever...), so we ordered this. I do not remember the name exactly, but it had the restaurant's name in it. It was like a bacon, pepper and tomato spaghetti, but the bacon was substituted with Cretan apaki.

Not bad, but it was too salty because of the overdose of apaki and, anyway, it wasn't worth 11 Euro.

I wanted to eat arnaki fricasse, but they did not have any dish with arni or arnaki (lamb) in it, so I ended up in choosing zigouri (mutton) in cooking paper.

A big mistake. The meat was incredibly salty, as if it was left in salt for hours before being cooked. Sad. 12 Euro.

Unusually for a Cretan restaurant, they do not offer anything for free (in Cretan restaurants, often they give free raki, rakomelo, or rusks with cheese even in Athens).

We had also a half litre of red wine (7 Euro) and the bill came to 55.50 Euro before discount (I actually paid 35.50, but they did not give us a receipt for the portion I paid with the coupon).

I am OK for paying 30 Euro p.p. at a restaurant on a condition that they do not serve any bad dish. Kouzoulo did it to me, so it is very unlikely to come back.

KOUZOULO
Dragoumi & Adrianou 28, Kifissia
(Δραγούμη & Ανδριανού 28, Κηφισιά)
Tel: 210-6233900