A mouth-watering, big fat Greek feast

lamb mince kebab (R38), the sheftalia, which is described as a Cypriot delicacy of two spicy pork sausage meatballs (R50) and a grilled sardine (R20). I tried the sardine, which was well cooked on the inside and nicely crispy on the outside.

My partner loved the sheftalia and souvlaki lamb because they were moist and had distinct flavours. The sheftalia also had a lovely bark but wasn’t dried out when you cut open the meatball.

All the dishes hit the mark and we happily sent snaps of these too to make our friend’s mouth water.

Our mistake though came with deciding to share a dessert to polish off the meal. We chose the Galaktoboureko (R40), which is supposed to be a crispy-phyllo pastry parcel filled with creamy custard and a honey syrup, but were dished up a horribly staletasting dessert with custard stodge and no crisp anywhere. The pastry should have been fresh and had the balance of crisp flakes with lashing of syrup. Sadly, this one had probably sat for one or two days too long.

It made for a terrible end to a really good meal. Still, Parea is worth a second visit. There’s supposed to be belly dancing and traditional plate breaking on Friday and Saturday nights, so smashing crockery in good spirits could be a sweet way to end a meal too.