Estia
Way off west tonight, at Henley Beach.
This restaurant is miscategorised on Urbanspoon. It should be in the lower price category, at which I typically turn up my snout. I hope its good despite that. :)
…marinated in olive oil, lemon and selected spices, chargrilled.
+chickpea and spinach salad with spring onion, roasted capsicum and celery.
The lamb tastes like it's been grilled. There's a taste of rosemary, but not much of it.
The meat is soft, but not particularly moist. It's not too far from being barbecue fare.
The barley underneath the meat is interesting to chew on, but it has lemon juice in it, which doesn't fit well with bland barley.
The salad on the plate is completely ungarnished.
The side salad is marginally better. It's crude, and in large pieces, and is fairly hard to eat. Whole chickpeas and straws of carrot really aren't interesting, and the dressing is probably just lemon and olive oil.
This is not the first time I've had this experience. Almost every time I have Greek food, I've found it to be not much better than a backyard barbecue. It's just barbecued meat, sometimes with seasoning, and a simple salad, often completely ungarnished.
Walnuts and spices encased in filo pastry, oven baked and topped with a rich honey citrus syrup.
I'm used to baklava being in a pan, and being flat, unlike this baklava "cake". Flat baklava has a much higher ratio of pastry, and far more honey. This cake is mostly just sweet brown paste and nuts.
I find myself cutting the mostly-pastry edges off the cake, and eating them.