WEDNESDAY MORNING

The dishwasher's still working!

Tuesday Evening

We went to Eleon in Sutton Coldfield using a Groupon deal (we’ve tried this a number of times in the hope of expanding our range of eating places: it’s been successful about 50% of the time, I think). Eleon is a smart biggish restaurant on the main road in Sutton, there’s parking outside that’s free in the evening, if there’s a space.

Our welcome was good and we were offered a choice of tables. We soon ordered drinks and our food. The wine came quickly, the water rather less so.

I had traditional Greek sausages as a starter, my partner had spinach & feta parcels. Both were good and came with a little salad and a basket of pita bread. 

We waited a while for mains – about 40 minutes, which was rather too long – I had Kalamari & chips. The Kalamari themselves were large and very tender; however, the batter they were fried in was so spicy that I couldn’t really taste the squid. The chips were very hot, but a couple of them weren’t cooked through. There was a salad (mostly green pepper) and a sauce that was quite like tartare. My partner had the beef stifado. Nicely cooked and presented, but very spicy.At this point we were asked if we wanted to see the dessert menu, though we’d ordered desserts at the start.

Dessert was the best bit, Baklava oozing honey and served with a honeycomb ice-cream.

The wine list was fine, though a bit too ‘new world’ for my taste: I'd like to have seen a few more Greek wines on the list.

Overall, a pleasant enough experience, but nothing I'd really want to repeat. 

Good news on the family front: my sister seems to be past the worst of her illness and her treatment is, effectively, finished!

PLANS

I've been toying with the idea of an 'exotic meat' dinner party for a while. I've got a bit of a reputation as the man who'll eat anything -- it isn't quite true, I don't think I'd eat
balut, but I suppose I might. Anyway, I usually take the perspective  of 'when will I ever have the opportunity again?'. Some of our friends share my approach to food, some are overtly disgusted by it and some seem curious.

So, I've sourced a few slightly unusual things that will be delivered later in the week: baby octopus, kangaroo, ostrich, camel and horse. I'm trying to figure out how to present these so that it will be a 'proper' dinner party, but still interesting.

Watch this space...