OPA! of Greece Belmont Market — Restaurant in Langford

THE SHORT: This was my first time going to an OPA! of Greece, and my first impression was that the food was quite good, even if a bit heavy on the cheap & greasy carbs to fill you up, and was relatively cheap compared to other fast food/fast causal chains after taking into consideration how filling it is. Its ambience is rather lacking though, but as long as the lobby is clean and available it’s not a huge problem. I’m here to eat.

THE LONG: I ordered a gyro pita wrap combo (which comes with fries and tzatziki dip) which costed me $13.81 after tax. The wrap itself was rather unremarkable, though still satisfactorily tasty and filling, but the fries, THE FRIES. For an afterthought of a side dish, they were phenomenal. They were nice and thick (I can’t stand fries that are all salt and no potato) and perfectly golden yellow; crispy but soft and moist but not greasy. However, what really sets them apart was that they were seasoned to perfection with what I am pretty sure is just oregano, but that’s still a cut above every other “1 $ on Google” restaurant I know of, and that’s not even mentioning the Spartan quantities of them given to you. They’re to die for when paired with the tzatziki. Unfortunately, the lobby is where this restaurant falls short of 4 or maybe even 5 stars. In spite of being a basically brand new location, the decor and ambience consists of 00s era Subway-esque kitsch stock photos with a thin veneer of “Greekness” thrown over it. Photoshopped women, unrealistic produce, and the occasional photo of the Greek waterfront, all on stark blue & white walls illuminated dimly by nauseous pale-green LED lights (it’s probably not as bad with daylight, but I went at 9:30 PM). The only thing to distract you from what you see is what you hear; FM radio top 40s music blasts from the Olympus, disorienting you, beckoning for your attention, ALL your attention. I’ll take it to go next time, thank you. At least they offer you paper plates when you ask to dine in, and the lobby has many comfortable booth with outlets to avail yourself of. Oh, and the service was unremarkable. They just had one guy working at that time and he did the job, there wasn’t much to really...

Without a doubt, the worst calamari that I have ever been served. Thin, greasy, tasteless bites of grossness. Frozen, prebreaded grocery store calamari would have been a huge improvement. My wife's lamb souvlaki was more gristle than it was meat, and really....an extra dollar for lamb? The only thing that was decent was the pita bread wedges, but for a total of $41.00 that's expensive pita bread. The plastic knives and forks were of the cheapest quality that we had ever seen, and the knife barely cut the gristly meat. They definitely need to invest in some decent cutlery and maybe some proper plates. We only noticed two other people come in to the Restaurant the entire time we were in there and that was for take-out, so now we know why this place was not busy, it's awful. My wife said to me afterwards that the women's bathroom was disgusting. She said there was garbage on the floor, the toilet paper roll was sitting on top of the dispenser, and there were no paper towels anywhere to be had to...

When I arrived to get my online order I opened the platter containers to check the quality before leaving and the chicken had absolutely no colour to it, it looked old and dry. None of the nice grill marks you expect to see. The potatoes didn’t looked cooked either, couldn’t even eat it, was hard and dry. I asked her to put the skewers back on the grill for me and she offered fresh ones off the grill. I didn’t say anything about the potatoes because she didn’t look impressed at all. The girl working wasn’t pleasant although she seemed to be working by herself so maybe that’s why. Once I got home I realized the Greek salad had little, if any dressing on it. It was a disappointing experience, nothing about the meal matched what I have grown to love about OPA, maybe we were just spoiled over the years at Mayfair mall but it...