Sunago — Restaurant in Echuca

First up I will have to caveat my review.

I understand this is Echuca, not the Greek cultural center than is Melbourne and the palate that needs to be catered for is totally different.

As a Greek Australian I have had the honor of growing up with Greek cuisine throughout my whole life, Giagia's violently refusing help in the kitchen lest someone disturbs their hallowed place of culinary worship. Ultimately the result is plates of food lovingly created by experienced hands from the old country and wholesomely delicious.

Sunago unfortunately misses the mark.

My arrival was met with a busy restaurant full of guests and serving staff moving between tables with a well rehearsed grace that exudes their passion. Greeted by a lovely girl who promptly took me to a table; she went through the specials and I read the menu. I would have liked to see an insert in the menu so I could further contemplate the choices available.

The dinner menu was well presented, descriptions accurate and a fair mix of more traditional meals brought into the modern Australian age. My entree` (meze) was the char-grilled octopus, now to hearken back to my past. Octopus in my family was marinated grilled over the flame, tangy marinade pursing your lips as you chew away at the deliciousness.

Sunago's attempts at char-grilled octopus was slices of octopus placed over some rocket, sliced red onion and a drizzle of red wine vinegar and olive oil. Fortunately a slice a lemon on the side brought some memories back as i had to make sure every drop of lemon juice coated the pieces of soft leathery octopus that adorned the plate.

I expect a bit of bouncy chew with my octopus, so i can savor the flavour of marinade but the first piece i had was met with a warm blandness that was noticeable and disappointing. Hence my need to extract the last drop of lemon juice. The addition of Red wine vinegar was sufficient for the salad.

As i was hungry I finished the plate hoping the "carnivore" meal coming would save the experience.

How wrong I was.

Sunago's "carnivore" meal reads as Chicken Skewers, marinated chicken, slow roasted lamb, kefthede, lemon, tzatziki greek salad and potatoes.

When the potatoes are the most enjoyable part of the meal something has horribly gone wrong.

Personally, I have never seen chicken skewers as a requisite in Greek cuisine, more attributable to Australian barbecues where the square commodity kebabs bought in woolies are a popular option. Pairing chicken skewers with more chicken on the plate is unnecessary and in my opinion is "padding". Both chicken pieces were bland, marination sorely lacking.

The Kethedes was cooked and somewhat flavorful, squashed into a rissole shape it was the meat of the dish.

Now onto the lamb.......... and as the meme goes "son, i am disappoint"

Lamb is always a centerpiece of a Greek feed, I personally have cooked dozens of souvlas and it has always been a hit with the "skippys". We take so much pride in the process my family owns a purpose built spit and have had in excess of 30kg of gyros slow cooked and shaved when just right. It is that much of a hit that mountains of beautifully marinated lamb are picked from the tray as it makes it's way to the serving table.

Sunago's interpretation is akin to an Australian camp oven roast, yes it is beautiful and delicious but not what i expect from a Greek restaurant. My serving of lamb was stringy, overcooked, lean and devoid of any flavor; not even a hint of garlic. A small piece of blackened meat and fat was the only semblance of flavor i encountered.

In most Greek restaurants the open fire of multiple souvla's is the star of the show, coals glowing and grey, multitudes of small fires momentarily giving light to the show as fat renders down and drips. Seeing shavings of beautifully prepared lamb falling onto trays ready to be plated up or be stuffed into a prepared souvlaki makes any mouth water. Sunago misses this mark and the shuddering fact that they slow cook their lamb drags down the experience.

I could go further but the character...

Having read previous reviews, we had high hopes for Sunago, saving it for dinner on the last night of a weeklong stay in Echuca.

We are actually very reasonable and forgiving people - and perhaps we got them on a bad night, being a Tuesday - but our experience here was no good.

We dropped $120 on a takeaway meat and seafood banquet, however got home and the oysters weren’t included. We called and the restaurant offered us the option of going back and collecting them, but to do so would’ve meant our food going cold, so we opted out. We were not offered any small refund or other compensatory gesture instead.

The food was incredibly salty, in fact we couldn’t eat the calamari it was so salty, some of the lamb was tender / nice but there was an enormous slab of fat in there as well.

For a $120 banquet, the ‘salad’ was laughably measly, with one slice of cucumber and tomato for each of the two of us (the picture is exactly how it arrived). The dip was also tiny and some of the chicken skewers were pink and undercooked.

All up, we ended up throwing out half of what we ordered which felt terribly wasteful and like we’d wasted $120 as well. Really...

We picked this restaurant because according to the reviews it seemed to be the best pick in Echuca. But my disappointment was great. Service was good. Water arrived soon after we sat down. The waitress was happy to take photos for us, even a few shots. But the food .... We ordered a seafood plate, soft shell crab and some pitta bread and dips. The soft shell crab was super crunchy and tasted alright. However, the bread was neither fresh nor warm and the dips were mediocre, so the 30 minute wait wasn't really worth it. (We kept joking that hopefully the chef wasn't kneading the dough!) The prawns were ok but not great, and the fried calamari was terrible. It was the most soggy calamari that I'd ever had. The batter became oily lumps of flour falling off the meat! I wondered at the time if it was because it was plated underneath other ingredients, but when I saw a bowl of fried calamari arriving at the next table, it looked just as terrible. And we concluded the problem was the batter and the oil temperature. Whatever the problem was, sorry we won't...