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By Edward F. Nesta
Cyprus 2005 - Meze
Travel for our marketing consulting business Luxury Hospitality Consultants took me back to the beautiful island of Cyprus and the city of Larnaca where I was able to sample the traditional dish of meze at two great restaurants.
Italy has antipasto, Spain has tapas, Brazil has salgadinhos, and Cyprus has meze, which is made up of a series of appetizers, entrees and desserts. Though this sounds typical, the amount and type of food served is anything but typical; meze is a gastronomic feast of all that the Island of Cyprus has to offer, and it is served family style. The appetizers range from olives, homemade spreads of tahini, taramosalata, tzatziki, flat bread or regular bread, yogurt, creamy hummus, french fries, pickled greens, pickled onions, stewed dish of snails, sizzling hot grilled haloumi cheese which is a soft native cheese that is a bit salty but very tasty with a squeeze of lemon, and of course a large fresh Greek salad of lettuce, chunks of feta cheese, tomatoes, onions and olives. The entrees include a combination of pork, fish, beef, chicken, lamb, pork and beef sausages, fried squid and fried octopus, grilled lamb chops, and chicken kebabs, which seem to never stop coming to the table. And for dessert you leave room for the fresh fruit and/or a plate of candied fruit, and of course you top it off with a Cypriot coffee.
Two great restaurants that serve traditional meze are Stop Schild Sun-Rise Tavern in Pervolia-Larnaca, where when the weather is nice, as it is for 9 months of the year, you can sit outside and enjoy the light breezes while watching the activity around you in the quaint Pervolia center of town. The second great meze restaurant is Black Turtle, which may be found just outside the center of Larnaca. Here you are surrounded by the sounds of musicians playing Greek music, and the sights of people, from young to old, dancing traditional Greek dances in the aisles. It was special to see the young children preserving a bit of history and their culture through dancing the traditional Greek dances.
To read additional articles on Cyprus please read Destinations - Cyprus, Hotels & Resorts - Thalassa, Music Reviews - Cyprus via London, Arts & Antiques - Cyprus Jewelry, Cook’s Corner - Char-grilled Octopus, and Oeno File - Levels of Greatness.
©July 2005 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
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