I have had a few meals at The Real Greek and so when I was in the Gloucester Quays looking for a quick lunch.
They have a lunch deal, so I thought I would go with that. I entered the restaurant and waited to be seated…
And waited…
True there was a member of staff behind the bar preparing some desserts, and did say it would be a few minutes.
And I waited…
I sat at the table and looked over the menu. I decided what I was going to have and I waited.
And waited…
Some people were sat on the table next to me and they had their order taken, even though they were sat after me.
And I waited…
Eventually a member of the waiting staff arrived, and I was able to place my order.
It took a while for my food to arrive.
I expected all the food to come at once, but the cold meze arrived first, and later my hot dishes arrived.
I had the santorini fava, taramasalata, and Greek flatbread.
The santorini fava was made from yellow lentils from Santorini, cooked and blended with herbs and spices, topped with a salsa of tomatoes, onions, capers and caper powder. I’ve had this before and enjoyed it then, and I enjoyed it again this time.
The taramasalata was a creamy blend with naturally undyed cod roe. As the menu says it’s not meant to be pink! I enjoyed the creamy dip.
The Greek flatbreads were soft and warm and there was plenty of it, which was nice.
The hot meze was spinach tiropitakia with chips.
The tiropitakia was three filo pastry parcels with creamy leek, spinach and feta filling. As with the calamari I had recently, sometimes I think does a dish need a salad garnish, this one did. The dish was certainly missing something fresh to accompany the filo pastry parcels. I would have chosen a salad instead of the chips, but no salad was on the lunch menu.
The tiropitakia had been deep fried, I was expecting them to be baked. I would like to have seen layers of flaky pastry. As they had been fried, they were a little greasy and crunchy. The creamy leek, spinach and feta filling was nice though. I liked the chips which were nice and crisp.
Overall I did enjoy my lunch, but was slightly annoyed with how slow the service was. The place wasn’t busy and they seemed to have plenty of staff, so it wasn’t clear about why the service was slow.
