THIS IS A RESTAURANT BLOG

THIS IS A REVIEW:
Recently The Boyfriend and I went to Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, on an errand. While we were there we planned to go to a Chinese restaurant in the area. The task of picking the place was supposed to be my responsibility, but I didn't have time to do it and still make it there on time, so I called up a friend and asked her for her advice. She mentioned a place and we walked there, but it was closed Mondays.

We sort of walked around after that and ended up picking, of all places, Felico's, a Greek restaurant. We agreed that there was a sort of delicious incongruity in Chinese food fanatics coming to Richmond, Chinese central of the Vancouver area, and not eating Chinese.

It was actually a rather cool and overcast day, so I don't know why I ordered a frozen mango margarita, but I did.



It was alright, neither fantastic nor horrible.



The pita bread, on the other hand, was fantastic. It was so warm and fresh like it had just come from the oven. Mmmmmm.



We ordered two dishes. Here is the Oreftika Platter, which is their appetizer combo and costs $19.95. I don't know if the picture does it justice but this thing had an overwhelming amount of calamari. Since The Boyfriend doesn't like calamari it was all for me, and it was a bit of struggle, because I like calamari but this was like five squids worth. We ended up taking most of it home, which brings me to something that really irritated me: there was a good amount of hummus and tsatsiki left, but they didn't pack it up. They did, however, carefully pack up the au jus that went with our lamb dish that neither of us gave a crap about. So it definitely wasn't that they didn't have those mini sauce take-out containers. Grrrr. It was really good hummus!

I also wasn't a big fan of the spanakopita and the stuffed grape leaves were too meaty for my taste. They were more like grape leaf wrapped meatballs. Which is good, but not what I think of when I think of this dish. Too much beef, not enough rice.



The other dish was the Kleftico ($16.95), lamb in mustard sauce served with roasted veggies. The Boyfriend was skeptical at the idea of mustard on lamb but it was quite good. Very, very fatty but so tender and juicy. It put me in mind of the traditional Sunday dinner, something that would be the highlight of your week.

My overall impression of the place was a mixed bag. They did some things really well but there were a number of things that irritated me needlessly. I'm somewhat of a stick in the mud so when I noticed that they hadn't charged me for my tea (I got mint tea) I brought it up to the waitress. In this kind of situation, when a restaurant makes a mistake and undercharges on a minor item, I'm used to them just waving it off, but she said she would fix the bill. I wouldn't have a problem with that either, except she took forever to fix it! We were standing right there and she couldn't seem to figure out how to add the tea. I was thinking "Surely at this point she will wave off what is essentially the cost of a tea bag?" But no, we had to wait for at least five minutes as she and another person (a manager?) wrestled the machine into adding the tea.

Even more irritating was the aforementioned failure to pack up the hummus and tzatziki. Even thinking about the hummus now, I want some. It was so full of garlic!

THIS IS A SUMMARY:
Name: Felico's
Location: 8140 Leslie Rd Richmond, BC (604) 276-8282
Prices: $7-11 for appies, $15-25 for entrees, as well as three platters for two around $35
Service: See above.
Food: Very good Greek food in an upscale atmosphere.
Recommended?: I'm undecided. I guess I would say I liked it. But there's this niggling dissatisfaction at the same time.