Traditional Cyprus meze in Lofou village

As far as food choices are concerned, I can be described as “the opposite of a gourmet” (If such a word exists). I am very picky about the food i eat and 99.99% of the time, i would pick vegetarian Indian food over any other and within this classification of vegetarian Indian food itself, I am very selective. So, this makes me a very bad company to anyone wanting to eat out. Vidhya has managed to put up with me somehow in this area.

So, for a person with such tastes, I surprised myself when i started liking the traditional cypriot meze in one of the restaurants in Lofou village. I was introduced to it by our gang after lot of convincing that i can manage with the french fries there. It turned out that i ate lot more than just the fries.

Lofou village is a short drive away from Limassol. You have to go on the troodos road and once you cross the Alassa park you will see an exit to lofou. From that exit, it is another 10 km drive. This part of the drive is on high plateaus and the views there are worth the drive. Lofou was once abandones, but now it contains a restaurant and few other agro-touristic homes. The village is small and it characterised by typical cypriot village architecture. A walk around the village will help in digesting the huge amount of food which you will eat in the meze 🙂

Once you near the village, there are clear signs pointing you to the “traditional cyprus tavern”. There is as such no entrance to the village. Once you take a left turn from the main road, you will see a small right which goes into the village. Here you can park the anywhere or there is a big parking place a little ahead on the right just opposite a schaool playground.

I love the setting of the entire eating area. We usually sit outside which is covered by tarpaulin and surrounded by plants. This place is always cool even in summer. Once it started drizzling and we moved to the centre table (outside) and the ambience was amazing, with rain falling all round us and us gorging on wonderful food!

We usually order the vegetarian meze for all of us. The meat eaters just order an extra non-veg dish. I never knew that you could so many vegetarian dishes in a restaurant in Cyprus. I wanted to count and photograph each of the items when i last visited, but i got so engrossed in eating that i forgot to do that. The list of items served to include (but not limited to) pita with cheese, haloumi cheese, fries, good salads, aubergine, mushrooms, okra (lady’s finger) ,pourgouri, tahini, humus and many others totalling around 28 in number. Our gang goes to many restarants, but we never experience the “fullness” at any other restaurant. On an average, we spend 3-4 hrs whenever we come here. it seems that the desserts are the best of them all (i don’t eat any of these). Lassanaki (dunno how to spell it) is the best.

Of course, you can drown all the food you eat in local wine!

If you want to eat traditional cypriot food in a traditional environment, then this place is a must-visit!