MR GREEK Will you be smashing plates in praise or anger at this new outlet?
our options for eating Greek food in Abu Dhabi are pretty limited. Until now, there’s only been one restaurant to get your fix of moussaka and taramasalata, at Acropolis in Le Méridien, but finally they have some competition – Mr Greek.
Curiously, Mr Greek didn’t start in Europe but in Toronto in 1988, and the emirate’s first branch is an identikit replica of the ones you’d find in North America. The décor is designed to look like a taverna on a Greek island. The booths are surrounded by white walls, with touches of blue in the ornaments. All the tables and chairs are also blue. Above the kitchen is a fake yellow and blue balcony, giving the impression you’re outside.
The menu sticks closely to Greek cuisine, featuring plenty of grills, salads and traditional desserts such as baklava. To start, the meatballs in a tomato sauce were a triumph – the ground beef was of a high quality, nice and dense, and the sauce was rich and almost sweet. Another starter, spanakopita, a pie made of spinach and cheese and layers of crispy pastry, was light but the flavours were a little too subtle. One dish we won’t revisit though was the falafels – our server claimed they were made Greek style, but their texture was more like a vegetable cutlet, and a bland and boring one at that.
For the mains, the grilled octopus
Ywith fried calamari and rice was the restaurant’s signature dish but was a mixed bag. The calamari were well executed, the rings of squid were chunky and delicately deep fried in batter, but the octopus arrived cold and had been on the grill for a little too long. The vegetable souvlaki, a dish of grilled and sautéed veg (think courgettes, aubergines and peppers) with rice was acceptable but lacked razzle dazzle.
For dessert, the chocolate baklava was huge and tasty, but get ready to taste more cinnamon than chocolate. You might also need a hacksaw to get through the bottom layer. The bougatsa with lime syrup, a dish the menu describes as containing creamy custard, was also confusing. It was more like a cake covered in filo pastry, and we weren’t convinced by our server’s claim that the custard had turned that way after being warmed up.
That brings us nicely to the service. Part of our order was forgotten, another time the wrong dish was brought to us, which was surprising considering the restaurant wasn’t busy. The staff, while friendly, had a tendency to stand by the serving counter and watch people eat, which was off-putting.
It’s nice to be able to try a different cuisine for a change in Abu Dhabi, but Mr Greek has some tweaking to do before we’d go back for another visit.
Yas Mall, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, Sun to Wed 10am to 11pm, Thur to Sat 10am to midnight. Tel: (02) 5651127. Taxi: Yas Mall. mrgreek.com