Pireaus Blues

Location:310 Brunswick Street
Phone: 03 9417 0222
Cuisine: Greek
website: http://www.pireausblues.com.au/

The Food and The Experience:
Brunswick Street is one of those quirky streets in Melbourne where there's a foray of good cafes, restaurants, bars combined with all this arts/craft/shopping. It's a vibrant location and it's busy busy busy (always).
So there's no surprise when you come across a place like Pireaus Blues (frankly I'm glad that I'm typing this up and not having to discuss this because I'm not even sure how exactly one pronounces "Pireaus") because it's a GEM.
It reminds me of Hellenic Replublic without the flashy decor and the celebrity chef, or perhaps this is what Hellenic Republic is trying to replicate however to some degree more modern.

Prior to heading out Pireaus Blues, no it wasn't a place I just happily stumbled upon after an awesome day of emptying out my bank balance on Brunswick street (a friend had suggested that we try such a place), we had checked out their lunch menu online and were pretty excited to try out their express lunch banquet.

Apparently this "lunch" menu did not exist as we were told by their "apparently" long time serving very arrogant employee who wanted to argue us out of getting this express banquet. There is NOTHING worse when the waiter argues with you, then tries to justify with "ive worked here 5 years and NO ONE has ever ordered this! this does not exist", only to be proved otherwise (we live in a technological world where mobile phones can access the internet that says otherwise) and needless to say we got what we wanted.

As with anything Greek (well at a Greek restaurant anyway), you can't go pass an assortments of dips. These dips were served with Pita bread. Frankly, we couldn't get enough of the dips and it was OH SO FABOLOUS and extremely tasty.
I'm a tad bias, I love dips (provided it's of the vegetable kind i.e caspicums and the like).
As this was being shared between 3 people, it was plentiful.

Then the Loukaniko(greek word for sausage) came out. I have to say, I wasn't the biggest fan of it, but I couldn't help myself either. You know when your brain says "nah, its not that great" but your tummy says "to hell with that, just eat it!?!? eat it?!?!?" I'm sure months on, my thighs are still carrying some of that Loukaniko as we speak. HAHAHAHAH. It was made better having copious amounts of dips left to slather over the sausage... and eating it with the pita bread.

I used to think that I was a massive fan of Saganaki and then I went to Hellenic Republic and the experience put me off so bad that I became hesitant to eat the damn thing, mainly because I can't stand the smell of hardcore cheese, it makes my nose want to put my partners dirty stinky socks up my nose just to eradicate another bad smell.
Fortunately Pireaus Blues' Saganaki was nothing of the sort, it didn't have a strong taste of cheese and it tasted well frankly just beautiful. It was like a party amongst my tastebud, the taste of cheese noticeable was not repugnant and didn't scare the daylights out of me.
You know your heart breaks when you have one triangle piece to share with 2 other people and you have to savour every moment like it's the last piece on earth (well as part of the banquet there wasn't anymore unless we decided to order more)

The lemon lamb, the calamari and the greek salad came out and oh man.... where does one start? The lemon lamb was succulent, tender and each bite was yum yum. I tend to steer away from lamb dishes when I'm eating out, mainly because a lot of places (i.e Maze) don't actually marinate their meats, and just like strong cheese, I really cant stand the smell of lamb on its on. But here at Pireaus Blues, they certainly got something right.
The calamari was lightly crumbed, the kinda stuff you wished people consistently did but always got it wrong but this place surely didn't. And the salad? Well there's nothing much I can say about salad, it's just a salad! LOL

And for dessert, we got ice-cream to share. There's nothing really to scream about the ice cream.

The overall experience was an absolute positive one when it came to food. It's very rare that I can walk away from a restaurant going "wow" that was pretty good.
It's just a shame that the waiter who was such a smart ass to us, kind of left a bad taste to the experience. But until I find a better and perhaps a cheaper alternative than the $29.95 I paid for the banquet experience, I'd be surely going back, especially if I'm in the area