Well that was terrible...
Restaurant has just re-opened after being refurbished over winter.
Look at the wine list and
Call over the owner and ask if he has anything we can afford FFS... He disappears and finds a couple of bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon that are neither Cypriot nor eye wateringly expensive....
Order food and about 15 minutes later the whole village is plunged into darkness by an unexpected power cut* which lasts the whole evening. Harris (the owner) says not to worry because they cook on gas. The restaurant has some emergency lighting but none in the bogs obvs.
Food arrives and is only lukewarm...
I presume they normally prepare the meals and keep them in a warming cabinet or whatever until they are all ready normally. Miss A sends her (pasta) back to get re-heated, the rest of us tuck in...
By this time a large table of Cypriots are beginning to be served their Meze, large clouds of smoke are coming out of the kitchen as the extractors aren't working... Children are coughing and the waiter is crawling on the floor between tables with a wet cloth over his face...
One of the Cypriots asks if we would mind having the door open so the children can breathe... Door is open which makes a marginal improvement on the air quality but a dramatic adjustment to the temperature. We put our coats on.
I go to the bog but it is pitch black. The only way to have a piss is to prop the door open, put the seat down on the bog with the light from the emergency lights then lock the door and find the seat by feel...
We finish the food and the waiter crawls over to clear the table and crawls back with my lamb bones for skilagi...
The manager approaches the table in his gas mask and says he won't charge us for one of the bottles of wine because of the
farce inconvenience...
We all start to stumble home by the lights on our phones (the village is literally pitch black)... Halfway home Swillmore realises that they are effectively locked out because they access via the electric gates and they obviously won't be working...
So all back to my place where I have a key to their front gate.
Couple of glasses of wine by the romantic light of the battery-powered emergency lights over which we agree that all the food was terrible and we won't be going back... Shame because Harris is a lovely bloke who has perhaps chosen the wrong career...
Miss A and Swillmore stumble off into the darkness with an emergency light.
The End.
* Just discovered an underground power cable snapped because of the land movement. Some of the village now connected to an emergency generator that has been brought in.
