Veggie Bites

This was the big dinner before the big gig! I really like this place – the food is amazing! There were four of us, so we ordered a vegetarian banquet. I just have to say that I have rarely seen so much food in my life! We had dips and bread, along with zucchini balls, vine leaves and stuffed mushrooms. Following that we had pides and salad. And just when we thought it was over, they brought out rice and veggies! And after that we would have got Turkish Delight and coffee (neither of which I eat anyway!), but we had to be off to set up the big gig! The food was great, the service is good (although we had to go to our second choice of wine as they had run out of our first choice), and the value for money on banquets is amazing!

A lovely friend of mine took me out for a belated birthday lunch. We decided this would be a great place where we could sit and chat overlooking the lake. Well, it would have been if it hadn’t rained the whole time we were there! Yes, I know, rain is a good thing! I ended up ordering a roasted veggie salad and some garlic bread, and I also shared some wedges. The salad was ok, the roasted veggies were mainly eggplant which was a bit too much for me. The garlic bread was average and the wedges were ok. So all in all, an average meal – certainly nothing spectacular!

Again, lunch with a fairly ‘new’ friend. Well it was kind of a working lunch as we are both members of the same volunteer organisation and we were chatting about the work that it does. My friend told me that the same people who run Mezzalira also run this place, so I had fairly high expectations, although I also assumed it would be cheaper as it is more of a cafe than a restaurant. They had a lot of yummy looking pre-made salads and rolls, but they also had a menu with more substantial meals. I opted for the penne arrabiatta, which, if you read veggie bites regularly, you’ll know is a favourite of mine! My friend had the chicken risotto. The arrabiatta had mushrooms, olives and peppers in it as well as the usual tomato and chilli. It also had quite a bit of black pepper in it. It was delicious! I was wary of the mushrooms – not a common ingredient in arrabiatta, but they didn’t detract from it at all! There was certainly a varied choice on the menu – including pasta and risotto, pizza, asian salads, stir fries and pad thai, as well as things like steak sandwiches and the like. There were quite a few vegetarian meals and it was reasonably priced, I would definitely go back!!

We got take away from here – it is not the usual place we go to for Turkish food, but we were really looking for pizza, and the pizza place was closed. We ordered dips – humous, tzaziki and carrot and bread. The humous was like paste and had a strange flavour – too much tahini I think. The bread and other dips were ok, but nothing special. We ordered two large pides – a super vegetarian and a mantarli (mushroom) with a bit of chilli. They were ok – certainly nothing to rave about, but I couldn’t eat any more after finding something very hard in one of the pieces I was eating. I spat it out and it appeared to be a small rock. I figured that was a bit of bad luck, but the next bite I took also had something hard in it, so I decided not to bother. Given that and the fact that they were nothing to rave about, we felt that it certainly wasn’t worth keeping the leftovers for a later lunch as we would normally do. I do like to try new places, but sometimes, it is good to stick with what you know is good – I’ll certainly be doing that with regard to Turkish food in the future…

Sammy’s has recently moved into a bigger and better space, so we really wanted to eat here to see if they had changed at all. They have changed the decor, furniture and plates etc, but the food and the frenetic pace of the place is still the same – and good as always! We had our usual – veggie spring rolls, dry fried bean curd with chilli, peppers and cabbage, sizzling tofu with needle mushrooms and asked them to make a vegetarian chow mein. All were delicious as usual and an excellent precursor to a very funny Ross Noble show!!