The Humble Gourmand

Monte Carlo Restaurant
28 Piale Pasia
Larnaca, Cyprus
Phone: 24653815 or 24629504

Manager: Fanos Stasopoulos

Cost: About 30 EUR ($47 with wine included)

Wine: Only local wines from Cyprus

After arriving in Cyprus after almost 24 hours of traveling from the US, I wasn’t hungry for anything heavy or too filling, and I was definitely ready for some air fresher than re-circulated airplane A/C.

Our taxi driver pointed us toward the Monte Carlo in Larnaca, a restaurant favored by locals for its fresh local fish and mezze. It’s been in the same family for three decades, and features Cypriot specialties including snails, one-pot dishes, moussaka, and various grilled meats.

Upon walking in, I knew the only food one can reasonably order is seafood. The restaurant is built over the shallow aqua water of the Mediterranean a few hundred feet from an old fort lit up with spotlights. There is a glass case featuring the fish on that evening’s menu, and the wooden tables with charming white tablecloths and painted chairs are set with special dishes of real salt flakes in their original pyramid form, as if they were plucked off the beach sand.

We chose a variety of appetizers and samplers. Olives were soaked in oil and served mixed with caper seeds, giving them a tart but salty and nutty taste. The tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber dish) was very light, not too creamy, but could have used some additional fresh mint.

I loved the fish soup, which had a very light broth, small slivers of carrots and celery, and lots of fresh flat-leaf parsley. The chef used flakes of a variety of grilled fish, keeping the fish from getting soggy and making the steaming spoonfuls a bit heartier.

The Wine Junkie — my ever-present dining companion — introduced me to Taramas, a light pink dish that I thought of as “fish hummus.” Taramas is made from salted and cured roe, which is blended with bread crumbs, lemon juice, olive oil, and vinegar. The result is a light and creamy spread that brings to mind the saltiness and brininess of the sea and goes terrifically with a pita or garlic bread. That is, if you can get over the fact that you’re eating pink blended roe…

The grilled octopus was excellent, served again with lots of fresh parsley and lemon juice. The outside of the octopus was grilled until charred and crispy without making the inside flesh rubbery, and the colors on the plate (pretty dark red and black and white along with the green of the parsley) re-emphasized the dish’s freshness.

The Marides, also known as whitebait, was a dish of five inch-long flaky white fish, fried and eaten whole — including the head. The Wine Junkie claimed I wouldn’t even notice the bones, so I took the plunge and tried one whole — only to discover many, many bones, leading me to pick the flesh off the rest of mine instead of crunching through them. I also didn’t care for the taste of the head, though The Wine Junkie said this is because I was a wimp and was thinking about it too much.

Throughout the meal we drank a 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon from the ETKO Winery – the INO Chateau Zanatzia, established in 1844. The wine required at least a half hour to breathe due to the high tannin levels and a bit of a harsh aftertaste. The Monte Carlo also did not have proper glasses for this wine; The Wine Junkie said the breathing process and the taste of the wine were hampered by the short, narrow glasses whereas a large bulb glass would have accentuated the flavor.

Either the night was slow or the manager was onto us — at the end of our meal the manager delivered a delicious dessert and two appertifs on the house. The light, flaky pastry was filled with fluffy feta cheese mixed with cinnamon, and had a warm syrup was drizzled over the top. The saltiness of the feta and spice of the cinnamon kept it from venturing into baklava land — a place inhabited by heavy phylo saturated and soaking in overly sweet syrup. For dessert drinks, he served us a brandy that was much too strong for such a light meal, and a local favorite, coffee liquor on ice — imagine if Starbucks made alcoholic Frappuccinos. While the brandy was too heavy-handed for the dessert, the coffee liquor was cool, refreshing, sweet, and complemented the cinnamon very nicely.

All in all, the Monte Carlo served up a meal that was the perfect light and refreshing end to an exhausting, harried day of travel — a terrific start to work trip in sunny, breezy Cyprus.

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