Charcoal Grill has established a name for itself in the seaside town for offering some of the best meat dishes around. With a menu comprising no-nonsense Greek and Arabic cuisine, this restaurant is guaranteed to satisfy even the hungriest carnivore!
Located right behind the main Enaerios road with its strips of cafés, Charcoal is right at the centre of town, but at a somewhat quieter spot. The restaurant has recently re-opened after a renovation that has upgraded both its interior and outside spaces, with decorative stone-walls stealing the show. In the summer, its outside seating area is extremely popular, but in the winter months customers cluster inside for a cozier dining experience.
One of the restaurant’s defining features is the consistently high-quality and fresh meat used for the platters. All of the meat used at the restaurant comes from the family’s butcher shop that first opened in 1945. The restaurant itself opened in 2000 and has since established a loyal client base.
Although there is an abundance of meat dishes on offer, there’s also a choice of vegetarian dishes. For example, the Arabic Tabouli and Fatoush salads, an Artichoke dish, mushrooms, jacket potatoes and a choice of five different fish dishes that can be either fried or cooked on charcoal. Vegetarians will also appreciate the ‘vegetables with eggs’ dishes, cooked in the traditional Cypriot way; these include spinach with eggs, courgettes with eggs and on a seasonal basis the popular strouthkia with eggs.
On our latest visit to Charcoal we ordered a village salad and traditional starters including tzatziki, houmous and halloumi. For our main course we decided to share different mains and chose sheftalia, lamb chops and chicken kebab. This was really the best kebab and sheftalia I have ever tried. The lightly seasoned kebab is decidedly superior, both in taste and tenderness. As for the sheftalia, the oversized version on offer here is superb.
We selected a red wine, and I was impressed with the choices on offer: 16 local red wines and six imported. There’s also an excellent choice of white wines, beers and spirits.
For the more adventurous, Charcoal offers some forgotten Cypriot dishes that are now hard to find, such as quail, pigeon and lamb’s head. Although not my cup of tea, I know that if you do go for something like lamb’s head you should make sure that it is fresh and therefore Charcoal is probably the best and safest place to try it.
For dessert we had Baklava and Yogurt with Honey, which are delicious but are also refreshing after a long meat-fest. I would also recommend the anari with honey. By the end of the evening we were stuffed, but what makes this restaurant so endearing is that it stays open late as customers truly enjoy themselves even after they’ve finished their meal. The friendly and cozy atmosphere makes you feel right at home.
VITAL STATISTICS:
SPECIALITY Local meat dishes
WHERE 4z, Glafkos House, Kanika Enaerios Complex, John Kennedy Str, Limassol
CONTACT 25 589397
PRICE mains from €9
Take Away Service also available
