Gazi is a Greek restauraunt owned by Masterchef’s George Colombaris. It has a modern style menu but incorporates the classics. It has a contemporary spin on traditional Greek food and maintains a home-style feel with the traditional flavours. Tasty indeed.
The ceiling is covered in red terracotta pots. It looks really nice and gives that traditional meets contemporary feel, which is also reflected in the style of food.
They have these really cute evil eye plates.
They had a range of dips, which come with soft and fluffy pita bread. We got the tzatziki, which was absolutely delish.
The saganaki had that crunchy melted cheese on the top and was all soft in the middle. It had a kumquat glyko on top, which was like a sweet zingy sugar syrup which made it even better.
I adore their grain salad, it has a great texture with all the assorted grains. The pomegranate adds sweetness and the cumin yoghurt livens the dish. Just delicious.
They have a range of souvlakakia, which are small soulakis. The meat is tender and I love that most of them come with chips inside the souva.
We had the falafel one, which is a good veg option, which had falafels, greek yoghurt, chips and parsley. This was a while back, but now I think they have a different veg option, which is a souva with sweet potato keftedes, pumpkin seeds, tahini and pickled onion, which sounds yum too.
I had the soft shell crab souva at the Gazi stall at the taste festival and it was really good. The soft shell crab was nice and crunchy on the outside and perfectly cooked, the honey and mayo added richness and the mint and coriander added a fresh herby kick. It was a real winner.
The duck souva is fricken amazing! All the souvas are tasty but this one takes the cake. The duck was cooked perfectly and had crispy skin, the poached pears were beautifully sweet and compliment the duck so well. Then there are melty caramalised onions, honey mustard, shoestring fries and parsley. Each bite was heavenly. After I ate it I wanted another. It was my favourite. Yum!
We got the homemade musk sticks. They were hard and tasted just like musk sticks should taste, a nice little sweet.
Loukomathes are sort of like little deep-fried donut balls. They are crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle. These ones were drizzled with honey nutella and topped with crushed hazelnuts. It was a honey sweetness with a hint of choc hazelnut. Very sweet but yum.
The crème caramel was thick and smooth and delicious. It had fried kataifi on top and was sprinkled with pistachio. The crunchy kataifi was a nice contemporary twist, which made this dish fun to eat.
The bombe metaxa was chocolate icecream and tsoureki (that sweet greek easter bread) covered in meringue and set alight (love a bit of theatre). The meringue was like a pavlova, fluffy in the middle, the chocolate icecream was in tact it hadn’t melted and the tsoureki was a nice cakey element.
Gazi is a nice place to get together and share some delicious Greek food. It is traditional food with a contemporary twist. I like that the restaurant has great food and a casual feel.
I heart Gazi!
Olives x
Gazi
Address: 2 Exhibition Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
Website: http://www.gazirestaurant.com.au/
Phone: 03 9207 7444
Trading Hours: Mon-Sun: 11.30am til late (everyday)