The Olive Branch in Haringey

Excellent authentic Cypriot food, great service and good portion sizes.

I had the meze. It was very nice and fairly priced. Nice selection of starters, fish in particular was very nice. Calamari was very tender and tasty. Unfortunately, the meat at the end was a little cold, quite dry and tough and unfortunately not very appetising. Also the selection was small (pork and chicken shish, 1 seftialia each, and a baby chicken i think).. No loukanika or pastourma, chops etc. The meat, as is seemingly more common in Cyprus now, is under seasoned. People have become incorrectly fearful of salt and it is ruining good food. As this comes at the end it was quite disappointing as you usually look forward to this the most. On reflection i would do as other locals did and order specific dishes instead of the meze. P.s the taramasalata was also delicious. 😆 The salad was poor. It was drowned in a very bitter olive oil. No acid was brought to the table. Using all of the lemon that was in the meat still did not make it palatable. This was really quite bad. Essentially inedible. The feta used was of not great quality. A shame for any non Greek people having this for a first time as it would leave a bad impression of Greek food. Our server was very friendly.

beautiful place with even better food, top star establishment

Si bien la comida aquí era buena, el servicio al azar realmente nos dejó decepcionados y con una impresión negativa de Ousia. Las bebidas equivocadas fueron llevadas a la mesa, el servidor que tomó nuestro pedido regresó repetidamente para confirmar nuestro pedido, lo que nos hizo sentir que no estaba escuchando, "especiales" fueron sustituidos sin ningún intento de comunicar artículos que se "agotaron" y varios platos fueron sacados sin explicación. Si bien entiendo el concepto de "platos pequeños" y que a menudo se sirven como listos, realmente no era aceptable que hubiera un intervalo de veinte minutos en el que solo un miembro de nuestro partido tuviera comida. La ensalada que se pidió como acompañamiento de la red apareció como un entrante, dos tipos de entrantes de calabacín se trajeron quince minutos de diferencia - simplemente parecía desorganizado y dada la conversación en otras mesas no estaban solos. Estábamos emocionados de descubrir Ousia y esperamos una cena con amigos, pero desafortunadamente nos decepcionó una sensación general de falta de cuidado. El personal era amable, pero simplemente insuficiente atención.

Troodos is no more as it has closed for business. Shame as it used to be very busy in the late 90's to the noughties. The couple who ran it were very nice and its a shame that they have now gone out of business.