Lalousis, Dewsbury
A little bit of the mediterranean in Dewsbury.
Invited by friends to the new Year's eve party without knowing what was involved or what it would cost. Arrived at 2030 to see New Year Menu £40 per person chalked on the board. Hmmmmm. Also arrived in the bar area which was the only way in to the restaurant and had to fight through a dozen or so people smoking as if they were due to give up for 2006. Very unpleasant.
Once inside and seated it improved a lot. To my knowledge not one person out of the 141 in the restaurant smoked inside it. (Yes that's 141 times £40 which makes £5,640 before anyone bought any drinks).
Short menu because of the date I suppose; Meze was pretty good, tara - rather sweet, tatzi - not enough cucumber, meatballs good, sausages good, dolmades good. Plenty of variety and plenty of it. No caesar salad at all.
Mains were a choice of kleftico, stifado, Chicken or choice of veggie options. Good but the accompaniments were clearly mass produced and suffered from it.
Throughout this there was a steady stream of real greek music from er... a CD player. True there was a guitarist who sang along but the bazouki player had gone on holiday (to Greece!) and was unavailable.
Deserts and coffee were ordered at the same time and coffee arrived 15 minutes before deserts (but hey! this is greece - let's chill out...). Variety of generic deserts not a trace of greek yoghurt with walnuts and honey. ((actually it's Dewsbury, West Yorkshire but once inside it was quite like the real thing))
The meal was slow (but hey! etc); halfway through the evening the waiters started dancing and did it very well. Several diners also tried it and enjoyed themself. The CD must have been on long play mode as most dances lasted 10 minutes when most diners would have prefered 3 minutes.
Towards 11pm a 2 by 2 table was produced and head waiter danced on it with head waitress. Being as the table was small this meant that both performers had to cling on to each other for fear of falling. Soon there was queue of eager diners wanting to dance very closely with either of the 2 principals.
Even later restaurant owner and his family led another dance and many joined in. There was the inevitable conga (greek style) led by the chef (as the kitchen closed at 11-15).
All in all it was a very enjoyable evening - a tad expensive but a place I'd go to again.
Unfortunately at midnight the new year arrived and instead of real people doing real things and enjoying themselves we then had to listen to 20 minutes of stereotypical new year music with ersatz jollity and friendship which degenerated into a disco of every bad disco record of the last 3o years cleverly cut together so everyone could dance non stop.
I sat in the corner and pretended to be grumpy old man ( which I found to be remarkable easy to do).
Invited by friends to the new Year's eve party without knowing what was involved or what it would cost. Arrived at 2030 to see New Year Menu £40 per person chalked on the board. Hmmmmm. Also arrived in the bar area which was the only way in to the restaurant and had to fight through a dozen or so people smoking as if they were due to give up for 2006. Very unpleasant.
Once inside and seated it improved a lot. To my knowledge not one person out of the 141 in the restaurant smoked inside it. (Yes that's 141 times £40 which makes £5,640 before anyone bought any drinks).
Short menu because of the date I suppose; Meze was pretty good, tara - rather sweet, tatzi - not enough cucumber, meatballs good, sausages good, dolmades good. Plenty of variety and plenty of it. No caesar salad at all.
Mains were a choice of kleftico, stifado, Chicken or choice of veggie options. Good but the accompaniments were clearly mass produced and suffered from it.
Throughout this there was a steady stream of real greek music from er... a CD player. True there was a guitarist who sang along but the bazouki player had gone on holiday (to Greece!) and was unavailable.
Deserts and coffee were ordered at the same time and coffee arrived 15 minutes before deserts (but hey! this is greece - let's chill out...). Variety of generic deserts not a trace of greek yoghurt with walnuts and honey. ((actually it's Dewsbury, West Yorkshire but once inside it was quite like the real thing))
The meal was slow (but hey! etc); halfway through the evening the waiters started dancing and did it very well. Several diners also tried it and enjoyed themself. The CD must have been on long play mode as most dances lasted 10 minutes when most diners would have prefered 3 minutes.
Towards 11pm a 2 by 2 table was produced and head waiter danced on it with head waitress. Being as the table was small this meant that both performers had to cling on to each other for fear of falling. Soon there was queue of eager diners wanting to dance very closely with either of the 2 principals.
Even later restaurant owner and his family led another dance and many joined in. There was the inevitable conga (greek style) led by the chef (as the kitchen closed at 11-15).
All in all it was a very enjoyable evening - a tad expensive but a place I'd go to again.
Unfortunately at midnight the new year arrived and instead of real people doing real things and enjoying themselves we then had to listen to 20 minutes of stereotypical new year music with ersatz jollity and friendship which degenerated into a disco of every bad disco record of the last 3o years cleverly cut together so everyone could dance non stop.
I sat in the corner and pretended to be grumpy old man ( which I found to be remarkable easy to do).
posted by Julius Caesar at
5:53 pm
