It was my birthday a few days ago and luckily the whole family was in the city (yes, I went to work on my birthday – I’m saving up my leaves).  My mother decided that we should have dinner to celebrate (I just wanted to go home and sleep, haha).  Thank goodness that traffic was relatively light that evening because my brother and sister in law were with us in SM Aura in less than half an hour.

Greeka Kouzina was the restaurant of the evening because apparently, my family has a subconscious mission to try out each and every one of the eateries in SM Aura.  The place is a little bit hard to find because it’s tucked away in one of the mall’s awkward corners.  It’s nestled between Mentore Coffee and Ikkuryuu Fukuoka, right across the second floor entrance of Forever 21.

I had my reservations at first because I’m not really the world’s biggest fan of Greek food, but hey, second chances and what not, right?

I quite liked how the place was set up – no frills furniture and simple white brick walls.  It wasn’t a big space but they spaced the tables and the seats generously away from each other so it doesn’t feel at all cramped.

We started off with one of their best sellers, the Fig Arugula Salad.  It had sweet figs, walnuts, sundried tomatoes, arugula, mixed greens and a ton of cheese on top.  It was soo good!  I don’t know what dressing they used but to me it tasted a bit like raspberry vinaigrette.  The sweetness of the dressing went really well with the saltiness of the cheese.  I was surprised that we were able to gobble this plate up so quickly.

We also had a plate of their Hummus.  The dip was good, but I really couldn’t taste much of the garlic.  The pita bread was to my liking because it was sufficiently fluffy and doughy.

Dishes in Greeka Kouzina might seem a bit on the pricy side BUT servings were huge and were definitely meant for sharing.  Also, all main dishes come with a side dish (you get to choose from 16 options) that could be a meal in itself.

I had the Salmon in Avgolemono sauce and a plate of Greeka Patates Tiganites, their version of the Canadian Poutine.  The salmon was served with a healthy pile of watercress, which was textually robust enough to go with the fish.  The fish was good but the sauce could’ve used a little bit more salt, I think.

I really enjoyed the fries though, and the addition of the feta really took the taste up to another level.

The parents both had a the Striploin, which I found to be a little bit tough to gnaw on but the flavors were amazing.  For the sides they had Moussaka (grilled eggplant with beef tomato sauce and cheesy béchamel) and the Pastitsio (Greek baked mac).

My brother, being my brother, got the Kotopoulo because it is his life’s goal to try all the chicken dishes in the world.  My sister in law got the Greeka Baby Back ribs.  No pictures though because I was too busy digging into my salmon to snap photos.

For dessert we all shared a plate of the Baklava but we were too full to even finish this small piece.  Biting into the baklava was a weird experience because years of eating junk food has trained all of my senses to expect the taste and texture of ice cream.  It honestly took me a moment to get used to the taste of Greek yogurt with honey.

While I definitely liked the food (five stars! – because everything that we ate was fantastic and serving sizes were huge), my main problem was the service.  The staff seemed like they were all new and unused to the service industry.  The waitress who initially took our order looked bored and was generally unhelpful in suggesting things from the menu and it took forever to catch their attention to get service water.  The staff also seemed unprepared to handle big crowds.  My parents and I were lucky to have gotten there before the evening rush because we got our food quickly; that wasn’t the case for my brother and sister in law, who came in a few minutes later, and got their food probably twice as long as it took for them to deliver ours.

I’d definitely go back to eat at Greeka Kouzina again because I’d love to try their other dishes, but I’d probably go there during the slow mid-afternoon lull so that the subpar service won’t be that big of an issue.

All in all it was a good birthday meal though; we all ended up being way too stuffed for our own good.