Departure Bay Motel in Nanaimo

If you've read any other reviews I've written, you know that we enjoy Greek food and we also enjoy checking out new restaurants, so last week after I'd been away for awhile we stopped by Zougla to knock another Nanaimo restaurant we haven't tried off the list.

It was a Monday night, and the restaurant itself was very quiet. It's a nice looking place, with big comfortable booths and great decor.

We started with the Caesar salad, and while it was a substantial size, it was just OK in terms of flavour. It still blows my mind that the best Caesar Salad we've had in Nanaimo comes out of a pizza place and not a nice restaurant like Zougla.

As there is few better foods in the world than cheese, we started with an order of saganaki. It's served very dry, which depending on your preference, may be good or bad. For us, it was a miss. The portion is pretty small, and you no longer have any delicious oil and lemon to mop up with the bread. It does come with some average pita bread, but you might want to specifically ask for the opening style bread, which was probably the best thing we had all night.

My partner had the chicken Zougla, subbing in the lemon potatoes for the rice. She found it to be alright, although underseasoned and in need of salt. The portion was a decent size.

I had the lamb chops (as the traditional style roast lamb didn't appear to be a menu item - pity), and they weren't very choppy. Pretty small portions of meat and took a fair amount of work to get off the bone. The greek salad was fine, and as far as rice goes, it was decent. I also had some of the lemon potatoes, and they are... not lemony at all, which for a greek place, is damn near a tragedy.

We were both extremely bummed to learn that it's yet another greek place in the city *without* Ekmek on the dessert menu, so I went with the mud pie, and my partner had the chocolate mousse cake. Both desserts were decent, though the mousse cake was definitely the superior choice.

Overall, the experience was fine, but almost entirely unmemorable, and the prices are high enough that Zougla has been added to the "probably not ever coming back here" list, but that's fine, because there's already good Greek places here.

Bill for two (with one drink) came to $105 before tax and tip.