Paniyiri 2009

The Paniyiri Greek Festival was on this weekend in Brisbane and we went along for a great afternoon of fun, food and Greek beer.


I'm really into Greek food at the moment so I was very excited to go. My goal was to try something from every food stall. I didn't meet my goal, but I gave it a good go :)

First up was a chicken slouvaki and some fried Haloumi from the Parish of St Paraskevi stall. Unfortunately, this was at about 3:15pm and both D and I had missed lunch, so we ate these before I realised that I wanted to take photos. It's a shame, because the chicken slouvaki was the best slouvlaki I tasted there.



Honey puffs and Baclava from the Women's Auxiliary of St George. Honey puffs are always awesome, but the baclava was fantastic. Flaky filo, tasty nutty inside and a gorgeous honey syrup drizzle. It was awesome.


Pastitsio from the Dormition of the Theotokos. I was disappointed with this - the pastitsio I make is much nicer than this.


Calamari and Greek Rissoles from Colossus. D and his friend loved the name of this stand. The calamari was nicely cooked but the rissoles were a little dry. Are they supposed to be eaten with something?


Next up was another plate of honey puffs from the Cretan Association of Queensland, who claim to have Brisbane's best honey puffs - made with real honey!! I asked our group what the other honey puffs were made from and no one knew. Fake honey? There was a slight wait on honey puffs at this stand, but our plate was the first one out of the fryer. They were awesome and crispy and dripping in honey. We aren't sure if they really are Brisbane's best or we were just lucky in our timing, but they were the best honey puffs we had.


Mythos Greek beer. D had quite a few of these, despite being very sick and on strong cold medication. He bought me a glass of Imiglykos white wine, which I really liked. We are going to try and find some for me to drink at home.


We were told that best place for octopus was the Cypriot and we saw heaps of people with plates of octopus, so we decided to give it a go. I hated it. I didn't like the taste or the texture, I really did not enjoy it at all. I'm glad I tried it, but goodness it was awful. I don't think I'm cultured enough to enjoy octopus!!


Also from the Cypriot was a chicken slouvaki and lamb slouvaki. The lamb tasted nice but was quite dry. The chicken had a strange coating on it that tasted odd, I didn't like it nearly as much as the one from Parish of St Paraskevi.

I wished I had eaten more haloumi and tried some souvlaki in a pita. One stall had lamb on a spit, I wished I'd had some of that. I wished I'd had some spanakopita and some cheese triangles. I said this to D and he said that he'd bring me back next year. Yay.


After lots of food we had some coffee and watched the Zorba competition. I amused myself doing the Zorba dance turning around in circles by myself, because it was freezing!!!!

We finished off the night with some Greek coffee which D didn't really like, but I loved. It was so smooth - not bitter at all. If all coffee tasted like that I'd drink it all the time.

It was a fantastic afternoon of good food and fun. We went with a great group of friends and had an awesome time. We also kept seeing Geni from Masterchef, which is my coolest reality show contestant sighting so far. Can't wait for next year.