Disappointing Souvlaki Night

Hubby and I went for some shopping in the evening and then we had like 1 hour and half until an appointment with friends. As we judged that there was not enough time to take a bus to go back home, eat something and come back again, we decided to have some souvlaki to fill the gap.

We visited a souvlaki restaurant called O Ilias, well-famed - at least so we knew - souvlaki taverna in Akti Themistokleous. You can see some photos here.

http://www.mesogeia.net/athens/pireas/ilias_en.html

Not being so hungry after a very late lunch at in-laws', we ordered 2 pork gyros with pita, 1 portion of fried potato, water and a coke.

Although it was a Saturday evening around 8 o'clock the place wasn't full and we were wondering why and joked about the current economic crisis.

Ilias' souvlakia are huge and the size justifies the pricing slightly higher than at the neighbouring souvlaki places.





But, this time, something was wrong. Both of us observed that the meat was dry and contained some un-edible tough snews.



According to the take-away leaflet, Ilias is currently run by a butcher shop and the lesser quality meat isn't excusable.

Probably we will not come back for a long time. As there are so many souvlaki places around, there is no reason not to explore other offers.


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Shopping list from Carrefour
Penne Rigate (Carrefour) 500g - 0.49euro
Calgon (large box) - 23.54euros
Mortadella - 2.20euros (9.25euro/kilo)
Lurpak soft butter 500g - 4.93euros
Canned sardine Geisha - 0.98euros
Sun dried tomato (Carrefour) - 2.45euros

Curtains

These days, we managed to get curtains for two of our three door/windows. One of the three does not have curtain rail and we need to think of another solution.

In searching for curtains, we first tried some shops. The cheapest we could find was 5euro per metre cloth and 4euro per metre for sewing work. According to the shops, we need 4 metres of cloths per window/door, which brings the cost up to 36 euros per one curtain.

After having asked suggestions from friends, we looked around and found 1 ready-made piece for 20 euros. I needed to shorten it to adjust to our glass door length.

And then, I even found 7 euro ready made piece and for these we managed to cover two glass doors.

7 euro ones are not fancy (20 euro piece is pretty handsome), but not ugly at all.

Great shopping.

Chiote Kopanisti

Kopanisti is a type of white, paste-like cheese made mainly in Cyclades. The most famous Kopanisti producer is Mykonos.

Our neighbourhood grocery shop happened to have Kopanisti from Chios and we decided to try. Just to be clear, Chios is in North Aegean and not in Cyclades.



It is a very strong cheese. Salty, pepperly, tangy and above all, stinky. It has something in common with blue cheeses, but this one definitely is stronger.

I wander if all the kopanistis are as strong as this one.

At a psarotaverna on Sunday

Yesterday, it was a very fine day and we went out to visit one of the psarotavernes (fish restaurants) near our flat.



Octopuses were under the Sun for sun-drying.



There are several fish restaurants near us, but being far from Mikrolimano area, they are not touristic and most of the patrons are Peiraiotes or Athenians.

We had fried kalamari, salad, bread, fried potatoes and this.



King Prawn Saganaki.

These are fresh king prawns and feta cheese cooked in tomato sauce. In theory it should be baked in oven in iron pan with two handles called saganaki, but in this version, it wasn't.

It was delicious nevertheless and especially the tomato sauce was lovely with all the juice from prawns.

We felt as if we were in holiday on an island. Isn't it nice to have such a "resort" just a few minutes from home?

Pedestrian Sideways in Piraeus (3)

Do you expect to find holes in sidewalks?