Zougla Restaurant — Restaurant in Nanaimo

If you've read any other reviews I've written, you know that we enjoy Greek food and we also enjoy checking out new restaurants, so last week after I'd been away for awhile we stopped by Zougla to knock another Nanaimo restaurant we haven't tried off the list.

It was a Monday night, and the restaurant itself was very quiet. It's a nice looking place, with big comfortable booths and great decor.

We started with the Caesar salad, and while it was a substantial size, it was just OK in terms of flavour. It still blows my mind that the best Caesar Salad we've had in Nanaimo comes out of a pizza place and not a nice restaurant like Zougla.

As there is few better foods in the world than cheese, we started with an order of saganaki. It's served very dry, which depending on your preference, may be good or bad. For us, it was a miss. The portion is pretty small, and you no longer have any delicious oil and lemon to mop up with the bread. It does come with some average pita bread, but you might want to specifically ask for the opening style bread, which was probably the best thing we had all night.

My partner had the chicken Zougla, subbing in the lemon potatoes for the rice. She found it to be alright, although underseasoned and in need of salt. The portion was a decent size.

I had the lamb chops (as the traditional style roast lamb didn't appear to be a menu item - pity), and they weren't very choppy. Pretty small portions of meat and took a fair amount of work to get off the bone. The greek salad was fine, and as far as rice goes, it was decent. I also had some of the lemon potatoes, and they are... not lemony at all, which for a greek place, is damn near a tragedy.

We were both extremely bummed to learn that it's yet another greek place in the city without Ekmek on the dessert menu, so I went with the mud pie, and my partner had the chocolate mousse cake. Both desserts were decent, though the mousse cake was definitely the superior choice.

Overall, the experience was fine, but almost entirely unmemorable, and the prices are high enough that Zougla has been added to the "probably not ever coming back here" list, but that's fine, because there's already good Greek places here.

Bill for two (with one drink) came to $105 before...

I have been to Zougla's many times over the years and the service has been good all the time. We had a large crowd for a special occasion (9 people). I had the salmon filet with baked potato and veggies. I am almost vegan (for health reasons) but there weren't any vegan options. I enjoyed my salmon and the baked potato. The salmon had a lemon-herb sauce which was quite nice. The meal came with a small serving of steamed vegetables which I wished had been a little bit larger.

My daughter has celiac disease and asked our waitress what she could eat that was gluten-free that would be safe for her. The waitress suggested the souvlaki...I think it was the lamb or the chicken so my daughter ordered that. Shortly after she finished her meal, she started having symptoms from gluten contamination. While we were visiting with our guests, my daughter overheard the conversation between a man at the next table and his waitress. He asked how the rice was prepared and she told him that it is cooked in chicken broth. Well, that would be the culprit as most chicken broth has wheat/gluten in it. sigh

Zougla's was very accommodating to us and allowed us to bring our own cake and provided serving utensils and plates to us for no charge, which we appreciated very much. I also tipped very heavily (30%) in appreciation for that.

All in all, the other guests at our table we happy with the food and the service. I would have given Zougla's a 4 star but because of the lack of gluten awareness, they are getting a 3 star rating from me.

High-end restaurants really should ensure that staff/cooks are aware of common food practices when it comes to allergies and...

Mediocre at best. We weren’t expecting a lot given both of had had less than stellar experiences years previously but decided to give it another try as a belated valentines dinner on a Saturday. It started out well, a nice booth table, greeted quickly and our martinis came out right away, full and delicious. Our appetizer of escargot didn’t take too long and it was very tasty and the bread came at about the same time but then it went downhill from there. Our bread was taken away while we were still eating it without being asked if we were done, we sat with empty drinks for a good 15 minutes with no one offering anything and when dinner cake both of our meats were improperly cooked. I had the special which was filet mignon with prawn and scallop souvlaki. I was never asked how I liked my steak cooked and it came medium well. Not my preference. There were 2 scallops and 3 prawns and probably 2.5 ounces of beef. For $38 it was a bit disappointing. My husbands steak was undercooked and hadn’t rested so it bled all over his plate. He liked his food and mine was good except for the beer and portion of seafood but given the dated decor, so so service and big bill I think it will be a lot of years before we give this...