Taverna Gorgona – A little Greek paradise

 

Taverna Gorgona

 

We came to Taverna Gorgona for lunch after strolling around the Ladner Farmer’s Market. It was Sunday noon, hot, and the patio looked pretty full from the outside. W had suggested we grab a quick sandwich and coffee and find somewhere to sit and eat outside, but I had my eye set on the Taverna. Luckily, right after arriving we were seated by the friendly owner Niko in the rear patio (the other one faces the main street). The rear patio is cozy, there are large umbrellas for shade and greenery surrounds, and there is even a little gazebo in the corner that can seat a small party. Like a little Mediterranean paradise!

 

Taverna Patio

 

 

The service is very friendly and fast here. There are a lot of servers running around. We were told that because I had made a little request for my meal (no cheese, sub rice for salad) that the food would arrive a little slower – but it was not slow at all. Actually, compared to many restaurants (save for Chinese noodle houses maybe  hahaha), the food came really fast. Every table gets a basket of pita bread, which is drizzled with what appears to be herbed butter. Their pita is not like typical pita … It’s thick and fluffly, rather like bread.  It was good.

 

Taverna Pita

 

Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve had lamb (lamb being my favorite in the red meat category even though I don’t really eat red meat.) I had already ate half of Fieldstone’s Cranberry and Currant loaf by this time, but I was still feeling incredibly indulgent :-D. Enough to consider getting one of their lamb gyro’s, but seeing how gigantic they are I was glad I didn’t. I decided on souvlaki, and since W ordered the chicken, I went for the lamb souvlaki. Gawd… was it ever delicious lamb! 

 

lamb souvlaki

 

 

This was W’s chicken souvlaki – chicken grilled to perfection! All their souvlaki’s come with rice, potato, tzatziki and Greek salad.

 

Chicken Souvlaki

 

Beer and Calamari:

Calamari

 

The inside is quite festively decorated, there is some skylight too so if you don’t end up out on the patio you could still get a bit of sun:

Inside the Taverna

 

This place is both casual and classy. It’s like you can totally get your fried squid, fried oysters, whatever, with your beer, and sit and relax, or you can come in at night, get a bottle of fancy wine, have a lamb rack. Cheers!

Beer!!

 

Taverna Gorgona

5047 48 Ave, Delta

604 946 9111

Ladner Village Market

  

 

Ladner Market

 

Drove down to Ladner on Sunday to check out the Ladner Village Market, held 10AM-4PM, every other Sunday until September. It is one of the biggest open air markets around, and spans several blocks, so naturally I was excited about going, despite having to wake up early on a Sunday to get there just before 10AM. The market had already opened and there were quite a few people already, and not long after I had arrived the music started! Early birds!

 

music

 

It wasn’t even 10:30AM and there was already a huge line-up in front of the Fieldstone stand (I knew they would be here, it was the first stand I looked for. The same two friendly ladies are working here as when I went to the Steveston Farmer’s Market last weekend 🙂 ). The line up was so long that it blocked the next stand over, and we were told to nicely shuffle over and not stand in the way. Hahaha. 

 

Fieldstone

After standing in line for a bit we got a parisian baguette and a cranberry and currant loaf:

Cranberry and currant

 

Since I didn’t really have breakfast I found that in a little under an hour I had already nibbled through half of the cranberry loaf. I liked it: it was whole grain, and had a lot of dried fruit in it. The crust was hard and tough, and the crumb was dense but not too moist. The bread itself was not sweetened, just kind of like a regular loaf of bread. There was a similar cranberry loaf out for sampling at A Bread Affair‘s stand that day (they were also at Steveston), and that one I found to be sweeter and softer and more like a fruity bread (Fieldstone’s is more like a bread, with some fruit. If that made any sense at all).  

 

Stopped by the Granola King‘s little tent. I’m not sure if this guy is Granola King but he sure looks the part! And was really nice and friendly too! I have never tried their granola before, but there were several samples out and they were all great! All their stuff is natural and have no preservatives, or added sugar. 

granola king

 

So I bought a small bag of the hazelnut hemp heaven (because it just sounded so… hmm… exciting!)  and some almond butter which the King also graciously shared on a bit of apple. I liked it a lot and even though I could get natural almond butter at the supermarket for cheaper I decided to get a small jar here. More on the granola in another post.

Hemp heaven and almond butter

 

More cheese from Little Qualicum. This time I tried their raspberry Fromage Frais – it was really really good! Definitely get some if you’re passing by here.

More cheese?

 

There were many craft stands here. My favorite was the canned planes one:

canned planes... plane cans. Recyclables

 

There are also the usual jams and preserves and some dried fruit stands. Some coffee places. I didn’t find there to be a whole lot of produce (for the size of the market). There was the one Okanagan cherry stand, one large tomato stand, some strawberries/berries, some carrots and potatos and such. Nothing too out of the ordinary. And for some reason there was a lot of garlic. The produce wasn’t that cheap either, so I didn’t buy any.

 

It got busy really fast! All the dogs were out in full force too! There was pretty constant entertainment and music, there were tons of people, the sun was shining… So it felt very summery and festive. What I really liked about this market- even though there wasn’t as much produce as I had wanted- was its size compared to the others. It takes up several streets. There are also more food stands (pizzas, gyros, hotdogs, the mini donut truck, not to mention all the bakeries), so you could grab a decent lunch/snack/dessert while strolling around. I ended up having lunch at the awesome Taverna Gorgona though, that will be in a later post! 

Ladner Market

 

Ladner Village Market

@ the Ladner Village on 48th Avenue, Delta

Sundays 10AM-4PM
June 08 & 22 – July 13 & 27 – August 10 & 24 – September 7