Spices: Greeka Kouzina

Whenever I passed by this resto during dinner hours, the place was always packed with so much people.To find out what the hype was all about, I decided to dine there early this year. We arrived at around 8 pm and as expected there was queue of diners waiting to be seated.

We ordered a bottle of Yellow Tail Merlot to go with our meal. A good quality medium bodied wine that's simple and very easy to drink.

Yellow Tail Merlot - Php780/bottle

The first dish that we had was the Salmon in Avgolemono sauce. I'm not sure if I got the greens right, the salmon was served with a bunch of blanched watercress on top and served with a lemon butter sauce. The dish looks pretty good but it fails badly taste wise. The salmon was overcooked, the fish flesh was tough and rubbery, it didn't have the glorious melt in your mouth feel. Luckily there was a wedge of lemon on the dish, because I couldn't care less for the lemon butter sauce. It tasted off, it might because of the wrong ratio between the amount of butter and lemon.

Salmon in Avgolemono Sauce - Php495

For each main dish that one orders, you get to choose one siding to go with the dish. The resto offers a variety of sidings, an extra order of Sidings costs 180php. We got to try three. The first is the Yesimites, a pepper stuffed with rice. This simple side order was pretty good, I liked how the pepper had a little char on it plus it was pleasantly sweet.

Yesimites

I would have enjoyed the simple Lettuce Salad more if the leaves weren't chopped finely. The lettuce sort of lost its freshness and crispness.

Lettuce Salad

The Roka Garides Pasta was pretty ordinary, it's not something that I would order again. It had a few Arugula on top but it wasn't enough to instill that aromatic astringent bitter flavor to the pasta.

Roka Garides Pasta

If there is one dish that I really liked and I should say a must order in this resto, it is the Arni Lemonata or Roast Lamb. Written on the menu, the five hour roast lamb is supposed to be the resto's bestseller.

Arni Lemonata - Php580

I was happy to see a huge piece of meat being place in front of me. I got my knife to tear off a piece and to my surprise, I didn't even need one, a fork will do, the meat just literally falls off the bone. Not only was it super tender, it tasted great as well, it absolutely has no gamey flavor. There were two dipping sauce that came with the lamb, I barely touched the sauces because it didn't need any plus I think it's actually a big mistake to use it, it's like putting ketchup on a good piece of steak.  I really enjoyed this. It's a perfect dish to pair with a good bottle of red.

'Fall off the Bone' Roast Lamb

The Roast Lamb is one reason for me to go back but the other things I tasted needs fine tuning. It tasted fine but something was lacking. I didn't feel like I was eating Greek food, I was looking for the Mediterranean flavors, flavors of olives, lemons and fresh herbs.   I haven't tasted much so it's hard to say if this goes for all of their dishes so I guess the only way to find out is to go back which I'll do.

Greeka Kouzina
Address: 285 P.Guevarra St., San Juan City
Tel No.: 02 6245974
Webpage: www.facebook.com/GreekaKouzina