Zorbas Restaurant
100 Broadway
Chula Vista, CA
(619) 422-8853
https://zorbasgreekbuffet.com/
To make the long drive to Hogetsu Bakery more worthwhile, Boyfriend and I tried out Zorbas Restaurant for lunch, a place I had stumbled upon awhile back.
Zorbas is a Greek restaurant that offers a buffet along with a regular menu. On certain nights, their buffet dinners are accompanied by belly dancing for your entertainment.
Boyfriend and I went during lunch on a Saturday afternoon. I thought there was a pretty nice selection of food. Neither Boyfriend or I have had much experience with Greek food. There was a selection of salads, cold dishes like tabouli and hommous, side dishes like grape leaves and beans, and main dishes like spanakopita, pastisio, mousaka, gyro. There was a dessert section and also two soups as well.
I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of food. I don’t know too much about Greek food, but I enjoyed most of the dishes and found them to be at the same quality as the sit-down Greek places I go to. The gyro meat was slightly on the dry side, so I wasn’t too big of a fan of that,but everything else I tasted was pretty good.
Here are some of the foods we tried:
On this plate is some rice pilaf, a mushroom salad, green beans, okra, pita bread, gyro, ground meat wrapped in grape leaves, and tabouli. I really enjoyed the vegetables on this plate. I liked the okra and the green beans and the ground meat wrapped in grape leaf.
Boyfriend enjoyed the chicken on this plate. He also got rice pilaf, potatoes, cauliflower, spanakopita, pita bread,gyro and the meat wrapped in grape leaves.
This plate had some more vegetables, pastisio and mousaka. Mousaka is like a lasanga, but layered with egg plant. The pastisio reminds me a lot like regular lasagna mixed with macaroni and cheese. There are layers of noodles, but it’s small noodles stuck together, and there is ground beef and some cheese on top. I really like pastisio and I liked the version at Zorbas.
Here’s another one of Boyfriend’s plates:
The soup choices were a lemon chicken soup and this fish soup.
I enjoyed the tomato broth and the large chunks of fish.
There were lots of different desserts. They all looked so pretty. I don’t know the names of most and I found them a bit too sweet for my tastes. My favorites were the eggroll-like dessert and the cookie with powdered sugar which reminded me of Russian Tea Cakes.
The servers were really friendly. This place is open almost all day long. Weekend lunch is about $10. It was a good experience and if we are in the neighborhood and craving some greek food, Boyfriend and I will be back.
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Oh yes, please tell me how it is with the live music and bellydancing! I’m definitely curious.
wow that place sounds good and looks great. Im gonna give it a try today with their bellydancing and live music tonight. ill let you know how it went.
Wow! There are mouth watering recipes. Thanks for this great post. It inspires me to visit once that Zorbas restaurant.
Thanks for all the names! I can’t believe they got upset you didnt eat all your olives! I pick out all my olives…the staff didn’t say anything. I didn’t find that the stews had too much vinegar. Normally I don’t like vinegar taste in my food, and I didn’t really taste any.
You should try it out next time if you go to Hogetsu!
Looks like Zorba’s has improved since I was there last. They were rather rude to me because I would not eat all my olives….LOL. They also used to put too much vinegar in their stews…particularly their simmered lamb shanks.
I shall have to try them again since they have a nice variety of Greek specialties that you don’t find often at other places. The Kakavia (the fish soup you had) looks very nice as do the dolmathes, the grape leaves. So many places only serve you the veggie version of dolmathes with just seasoned rice, but I always prefer the meat version.
I wonder if they can serve the full version of Kakavia which is supposed to have a lot of different fish and seafood in it. It is the mother of Bouillabaisse, so it can be served as a whole meal with bread and salad. It can have shrimp, scallops, octopus, mussels, and all kinds of different fish in it.
The powdered sugar cookie is called Kourabia, it sometimes has almonds in the shortbread. I love it. The rolled pastries are probably a variety of Baklava or Paklava, it depends on what they were stuffed with. Walnuts are Baklava and Pistachios are Paklava.
Happy New Year, Kirby!
i’ve never had this kind of buffet, but that would be nice since you can try out many things. i’ve rarely had indian food besides buffet, and it’s hard for me to go to just dinner or something because you don’t get the variety. but def. an interesting find you made! and that’s a lot of desserts they give you too. happy new year to ya!