Symposium

I must have walked past Symposium at least 50 times in the last year without venturing in.
It’s unassuming from the outside and despite being billed as a Greek deli/​café it has windows adorned with signs for full English breakfasts and the like.
It was therefore a pleasant surprise when the meal turned out to be the nicest Greek food I have had for some time in this country. Now I should point out that we only shared a mezze platter for two, so my judgement is based on this alone, but the whole plate was spot on.
I have had countless bland mezze players of late cough, cough — LS6 but it had a generous portion of chunky, garlicky houmous, meaty (not salty) olives, fresh raita and braised butterbeans. Adorning the top was a block of rich, dense, piquant Feta and it was also accompanied by herb-​filled dolmades.
Everything was fresh, flavourful and it only cost about 7 quid but we only just made it to the end as it’s a generous helping they serve.
You can also buy various products from their deli (including the aforementioned cheese) and they also have Greek sausages and other such items, of course including the obligatory bowls of marinated olives.
Perhaps it was because I didn’t expect so much that I was pleasantly surprised. But it’s nice to see something so simple done so well.

My boyfriend and I nipped in here the other week for a small bit of lunch, as I we’d seen the signage up for about a year. It seems it only opened in the summer, although I’m sure it had been set up long before that. There’s not a plethora of seating, and I can see it being a lot more popular in the summer months when the al fresco can be appreciated, but it is clean inside and has the freshness of being a new venue.
It’s a Mediterranean/​Greek style café/​deli and hosts a number of different things. You can purchase a variety of deli items, including some pastas and there isn’t anywhere too nearby that I can think of who offer this. In the deli counter you’ll find a number of home made pies, freshly made cakes (including Baklava — yum!) and other goodies.
We chose to sit in and have a sandwich and a drink and service was friendly and swift. The chap was quiet, but very sweet and my boyfriend likened him to one of the characters in Murikami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicles — the main lady’s son, who never really says anything but you always know exactly what he means!
My coffee was lovely, and a reasonable size, and for around a tenner (I think just over) we had two sandwiches, olives and two drinks. The sandwiches were made using freshly baked focaccia bread, which you can purchase, and it was lovely. It had olives, red onion and other bits sort of infused in the bread. The olives we had on a dish were fine, the green ones super tasty and the black ones a little bland, which seemed to suit us perfectly — I had the green ones, whilst olive-​shy boyfriend chose to consume the black ones!
The disappointment for me was that my £3 odd sandwich wasn’t particularly big and the amount of brie I had inside was pretty meagre. (I had also asked for the crust to be cut off the brie, which it wasn’t!) It was meant to have sundried tomatos inside, but there were none, seemingly replaced with a few olives. That said, my boyfriend was very happy with his meatball, mozerella and salsa sandwich, which in turn was stuffed with goodness and rather delicious. Perhaps I shall order that next time and I’ll be a little more satisfied!