53. Mourayo
If there was a Greece pavilion at Epcot, it might look a lot like Mourayo. The restaurant has a kitchy (and borderline cheesy) ship decor, complete with porthole fake windows and oiled wood floors. Most ridiculous of all has to be the waiters’ costumes. Unfortuantely (or maybe fortunately for the poor souls who work there) I forgot my camera battery last night and couldn’t commit these heinous acts of fashion violence to film. So I will now try to describe their outfits: black and white striped tshirts, black pants, with a jaunty little sailors hat. It looked funny on the guys, though they had the sailor-esque facial hair to pull it off, but when a pretty normal looking girl came out with the aforementioned outfit I felt really terrible for her. That all being said, you know this restaurant was good if I am willing to completely overlook the ridiculous kitch factor (at least from now on).
The three of us who dined together decided to go the sharesies route—two apps and two entrees. For our appetizers we chose the assortment of dips (we are not girls who can turn down a good dip) and the sauteed shrimp with tomato and feta sauce. The shrimp was very good, big shrimp (oxymoron alert!) with a zesty little sauce. The dips were great. As my friend Meagan put it, who knew there were eight different kinds of bean puree sauces? Of the eight, the fava and chickpea purees were good but not memorable, and the roasted red pepper and cayanne and the fish dip (missed the real name, sorry readers) were the best. I could have eaten those all day. They were served with some mighty tasty toasted pita to boot. For our mains we chose the black ravioli with crab, and the duck mousaka. The homemade squid ink pasta was very good, but the dish wasn’t so memorable otherwise and I thought the crab filling was a little fishy for my liking. The duck mousaka was so good though, that even as a certified eggplant hater, I fought my dining companions for the last few bites of the ducky eggplanty goodness. Especially noteworthy was the duck stock reduction sauce, which I’m seriously considering recreating come Thanksgiving mashed potato and gravy time.
We finished off the meal with some coffee and an assortment of Greek pastries. I am not a huge fan of said pastries since I find they usually are just dense cakes soaked in some sort of alcohol syrup that just makes them messy. That was the case with these for the most part, but alongside the syrupy cakes was some Greek yogurt and honey. That was amazing. It was sweet and thick, and unlike any yogurt, unlike any Greek yogurt, I’ve ever had. I’m not a big dessert person, but that yogurt and honey was well worth the price of admission ($11.95 for the sampler platter). As we were paying, the table next to us was served their main course—a whole fish baked in salt. Not only did it look wonderful, but it was deconstructed tableside by a waiter with some serious knife skills. I don’t know how it tasted, but it sure was pretty. I’ll be trying that next time. Think it’s served with a side of yogurt and honey?
