Yiannis Greek Taverna: Greek takeout in New Westminster
Yiannis Greek Taverna is a Greek restaurant located in New Westminster. They are family owned and have been operating in New West since 2000, offering all the classic Greek dishes.
This review is based on a takeout experience.
Dinner platter ($45)
We decide to order their dinner platter to taste the variety on their menu. We also added an extra order of calamari and roast lamb, so that will be included in the total $.
Salad
This is a classic small greek salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, feta cheese, and olives and dressed with salt, pepper, Greek oregano, and olive oil. Regular price for their salad is $9.
The salad is refreshing and light, a classic dish with no problems.
2 chicken skewers served with Pita, Rice, Potato
The chicken skewers are quite big and flavourful. The chicken meat is not dry. Regular price for 2 chicken skewers is $18.
The rice actually tasted very good to me as I don’t usually eat greek rice. I am not the biggest fan of how potatoes are cooked in Greek cuisine – they taste too sour for me, but the potato itself is cooked well and soft to the touch. Carrots were a little too soft and bland for me.
I actually didn’t get a chance to taste the pita because I was too full lol! But we air-fried it the next day in our airfryer and it tasted great with the tzatziki sauce.
Dolmathes
This is an interesting little appetizer because I’ve never tried it before. Dolmathes are little balls of rice with ground beef stuffed inside vine leaves. On the outside, they look similar to the Chinese sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves.
They are small so you can pop them into your mouth. It tastes very ethnic. Regular price for this appetizer is $9.
Calamari
One of my favourite appetizers in Greek cuisine (because I love anything deep fried…). The calamari tasted exactly how I expected it to be. The takeout process did not make the deep fried squid too soggy but the batter didn’t perfectly stay on every piece. Tasted great with the tzatziki sauce and a few drops of lemon.
Regular price for a calamari is $10.
Roast lamb
This is the main entree and it’s a lamb shoulder, marinated and roasted. I don’t eat a lot of lamb because I find it too gamey, but the lamb meat is cooked so tenderly. It falls off with just the touch of a fork! Super great texture.
Taste-wise, it’s good with the rice and salad in between. Again, I still find lamb meat a bit too gamey for my preference, but the cook on the lamb is perfect. Regular price for this entree is $15.
Final thoughts
In total, we spent $98 after tax, service fees and delivery. This was enough food for 3-4 people as we had a lot of leftovers.
The dinner platter is a great deal because if you ordered everything separately, that would cost you roughly $61. I think the dinner platter itself can feed 3 adults or a family with 2 children. Keeping in mind that if you order the dinner platter, the portion sizes will be slightly different vs. if you order al le carte.
The cherry on top is that they are a local and family-owned restaurant. If you want to better support local restaurants, I recommend ordering pickup over the phone so you can save some $ on service fees and delivery fees from the different food delivery apps.
Sincerely, Loewe