Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

It’s been a month or so since the new food and beer place – Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern – opened in Limassol.  I tried to get there over weekend evening a couple of times, but it was always packed and I forgot to book.  However, today I had the pleasure of having lunch there.

And while the food there is pretty good (if you choose right), their customer service is outstanding – something many other places can learn from.

Here is the story for you.  Four of us came for lunch.  All of us were there for the first time.  We were welcomed and offered a table.  The beers arrived and we made our menu choices.  I, for some reason, was expecting their steaks to be quite good, so I asked for the Fire-Grilled Fillet Steak.  And I wanted it medium-rare.  A few minutes passed and we got out food.  It looked quite delicious, but when I tried my steak I was somewhat disappointed.  It was rather dry and stiff. And it was smallish.

Being on a see food diet (“I see food, I eat it”), I could of course finish that steak easily.  But one of the friends at the table suggested that I request to change it.  It’s not something that I usually do.  Or ever for that matter.  But I thought why shouldn’t.  After all it was a new place which seemed very decent and I wanted to fully enjoy it.  So I called a waiter and politely explained that I am not enjoying my steak that much.  The waiter asked to hold a moment for the manager.

The manager indeed appeared in a moment.  He asked me what was the problem and I explained.  Than something really good happened.  The manager asked what would I prefer instead of the steak.  I ran through my menu options again and selected The Big Irish Burger.

Just a few moments later, I got the burger and let me tell you this – it was fantastic.  For those of you who think of burgers in terms of McDonalds, you don’t know what a burger is.  The Big Irish Burger is huge.  In fact, it’s so high that to keep it straight, they stick a steak knife into it vertically.  And listen to this – the full blade of that knife is hidden inside the burger and it’s not going through the whole thing.  Of particular interest are two chunks of meat inside that burger.  Those are something – soft, juicy, and delicious!

After I’ve eaten the first half of that burger I already totally forgot about that whole steak thing.  I was really enjoying myself.  And I mean really enjoying.  I guess it was so obvious from the outside that the manager noticed it and wanted to finish me, sending another Guiness pint on the house. Oh, boy!

Is that all, you wonder?  Nope.  I had to form my opinion about this place properly, so I asked for some dessert menu.  I don’t remember exactly what I ordered, but it had “Xango”-something in the name.  It turned out to be a huge scoop of good ice-cream, in the company of some bananas (cooked or marinated or something like that) and with a few spoons of delicious syrup.   It’s been a while since I had a dessert this good.  In fact, I remember exactly when was the last time.  It was when they used to serve home-made ice-cream with nuts in that Italian restaurant in Akrotiri.  But they don’t do it any more.

Oh, well.  After the food and beers and desserts we paid a reasonable bill and left.

So, what do I think about that place?  It’s awesome!  The insides are nice, the atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming, outstanding customer service, some of the food is really good, while some is not, reasonable prices.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be coming back for more of that burger and dessert.  And I want to try their barbeque ribs as well.

As I mentioned earlier, Masters of Dirt – world-wide known group of free-style motocross riders – were coming to Cyprus for a few shows.  I went to see their show in Limassol yesterday.

Masters of Dirt (photo from Cyprus site)

In brief, I had an excellent time.  There were a few people who were trying to spoil the fun (DJ Mousaka) or were not quite up to the par with the show (The Fuel Girls), but that was easily compensated by the Masters of Dirt.

Taking the unimportant out of the picture, imagine this: loud hard rock music (Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, AC/DC, and such), fireworks, and motocross bikes jumping off the rump one after another, doing all sorts of crazy stuff in the air!  Pure awesomeness!

The show started with some warm-up tricks, which looked like anybody can do them, slowly progressing to more difficult ones and to group jumps in pairs and “trains” of four.  After a little break they went totally insane.  It was non-stop action from four riders, who were later joined by a quadro-cycle rider.

My favourite bit was when they did the back-flip  progressions.  I am not very familiar with the free-style motocross sport, so I learned a lot.  They were calling for the name of the trick (“tsunami”, “cancan”, etc) and had two riders – one was doing the original trick, and the second one was doing the back-flip variation of it.  That is the same jump and move while the motorbike was doing a back-flip in the air.  Some of the original tricks looked very difficult. However their back-flip variations were in the “impossible” range.

If you haven’t seen their show yet, here’s your chance.  They will have another show in Limassol tomorrow, Sunday, June 28th.  I suggest you catch it.  And if you have any kids – make sure they see it as well.  Tickets are 30 EUR for adults, 25 EUR for minors, and entrance for kids under 6 years of age is free.  I had Maxim (4.5 years old) and he enjoyed the show quite bit too.

Highly recommended.

OnThisIsland.com lets us know that Masters of Dirt are coming to Cyprus.  According to the Masters of Dirt Cyprus web site, there will be four shows – two in Paralimni (Saturday, June 20 and Sunday, June 21) and two in Limassol (Friday, June 26 and Sunday, June 28).

(Photo from Masters of Dirt Cyprus site)

Tickets are 60 EUR for VIP, 30 EUR for regular adults, and 25 EUR for 15-year old and younger.  There will be the bike show, fireworks, more show, and I guess the loud music, because the word DJ is all over it too.

We have a few people from work who want to go, so I think I’ll go too (Friday, June 26th preferred).  I am still thinking if I should take Maxim (4.5 years old) with me or not.  And there is always this question of tickets availability.

What about you?  Are you coming?

Maxim and I went to the see the show of the famous Medrano Circus on Sunday.  It was supposedely the last day of their tour, but gladly they decided to delay their departure and will be staying until Wednesday, October 29th.

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Yesterday I observed a really weird thing – snow in Limassol.  The temperature dropped down to +2 degrees Celsius, it was very windy, and it was snowing for at least two hours.  Of course, the ground is too warm for the snow to stay, but other surfaces, like, for example, my car, were covered in snow.  That was really wicked!

In my 12 years in Limassol, I’ve seen snow like only two or three times.  Previous experiences weren’t even close to yesterday’s.  They seemed more like accidents.  But yesterday … it was snow for real.

Via Google News I came across this article in Cyprus Mail, which talks about the new regulation from Limassol municipality for removing abandoned vehicles.  Interestingly, I thought about it a few times already.  There are many abandoned cars in the city, and they often add to the parking problem that is getting worse and worse by the day.

The picture above shows the abandoned car near my house.  It stays there, with garbage bins, for a couple of years now.  Previously, it was occupying space on our guest parking for at least three more years.  I know there were a few complaints by my neighbors to get rid of it, but somehow it is still standing there.  People cannot remove it by themselves, since it has valid number plates.  And authorities were a tiny bit too slow on it.  Maybe now it will get some attention.

Also, it’s nice to see that Limassol’s municipality takes action on this one, howeve, I believe that the problem is wider than just our area.  I’ve seen quite a few abandoned cars in Agia Napa, Nicosia, and Pafos.  I’m sure there are a few in Larnaca as well, but my routes there are rather limited and short.

I remember trying to pull the bed sheet from Olga all night today. When I woke up I felt chilly and wasn’t in the mood to get out of bed. When I stepped on the floor, I realized that it was than chilly – very refreshing. I was extra fast putting my clothes on too.

When I stepped outside, I immediately felt the urge to stick my hands into pockets of my jacket. Steam was coming out of my mouth. And I had no will to go to work.

While walking towards the car I was wondering if that’s really so cold or if that’s just me dramatizing on weather. As soon as that thought came to my mind, I heard a loud bang. It was a sparrow. He probably decided that life wasn’t worth living no more with temperatures that low and crashed into the office window at full speed. He dropped dead and made me feel sad.

Morning just wasn’t working out.

I started the car and checked the outside temperature. 9 degrees Celsius! (If you think that’s not cold, try boosting the relative humidity in your area to something above 60%.) No wonder I felt cold…

On the way to the bakery to get some breakfast I saw a couple of Philippino guys. They were even cold to look at. It was like they were wearing all clothes that they had, and then some more, borrowed from a friend. One of them had two hats. Poor guy was freezing his brains out I guess.

I came to the office about 20 minutes before the start of my morning shift (The start of the shift is at 7:00am), so I had enough time to enjoy the hot and sweet cup of coffee with still warm and fresh mushroom pie from the bakery.

Morning turned for the better…

We are experiencing some of the heaviest rains today. One of them caught me on the road from the office to home. I was driving 20 km/h and couldn’t see nothing. The best I could do was to see the lights of another car about ten meters in front of me. It got a little bit easier towards the second half of my journey, but I faced another problem – loads of water on the road. At one time I stopped at the traffic light and saw this small van FLOATING from the street across mine. The guy was trying to steer, but there was no chance. He was lucky that he was floating on the green light.

With all the danger and confusion of this weather, I still like it so much that I wouldn’t change it for hot summer days. Thunders and lighnings are the greatest bonus ever.

For years now Limassol is inhabbited with crowds of Russian people. There are so many of us that many locals somewhat speak the language, many restaurants offer menus in Russian, as well as shops have “special” price lists.

One of the sides of the strong Russian community is a number of “Russian” shops. These are rather small shops that sell all sorts of goods that many Russian people miss. Mostly those are books by suicidal novelists and food items like caviar, pelmeni, and vodka.

For years, both Olga and I were going to visit one of this shops just to see if there was anything that we’d like to buy. We always knew practically the complist price list, because so many of our friends shop in these places regularly and tell us all about them. But we never got our act together. Either we were to lazy, or didn’t care much – I am not sure.

Our shopping routine was almost rock solid for all this years. A weekly trip to Woolworth Ermes covered almost all our food needs. Nearby bakery supplied us with fresh bread. And when we felt like and adventure we would sneak into the enemy’s camp go shopping to either Chris Cash & Carry or Orphanides.

Guess what have changed last week? You’ll never do, as we were surprised ourselves. Our best and favourite supermarket Ermes opened a small section with products for that Russian market. Some of the products are imported directly from Russia – cereals, beer, bread. Others bought from European countries that have so many Russians that it is economically feasable to produce those goods – canned mushrooms, tomatos, and meat.

When we discovered this Russian shelf near the butcher’s section were were laughing out loud. They say that if gnome won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will come to gnome. True indeed.

Now we have even fewer reasons to go shopping at another supermarket. Not only we have everything we need in Ermes, but we surely have more.

P.S.: Russian beer sucks big time. Canned (salted or marinated) mushrooms imported from Germany are pretty good. Canned (salted) tomatos are superb! Just in case you were wondering.

It’s that time of the year again, when crowds of Russian people gather together in Kakomalis picnic place and do all sorts of cool stuff. Playing games, cooking barbeque, shooting lots of pictures, singing songs, dancing, and drinking lots of vodka.

While usually I rush to Kakomalis early after noon, today I only managed to get there by about 7:30pm. Still, I didn’t miss much. Most of the music part was still ahead.

This time was the 5th song festival. Each time it is different fromt he last and so it was today. First of all, the stage was at a different place. It was high up on the hill, so all the tables and people were reorganized quite a bit. Secondly, three core musicians (Albert, Doors, and Vladimir Kardash) had to leave early due to their own reasons, so the “pro” part of the concert was somewhat smaller. There was a new rising star though – Pasha. He was excellent. And multilingual too. And he didn’t limit himself to the usual Russsian and English. He went a few more, including the Turkish language. Truely, the music knows no borders.

Fewer people attended this time and most of them left earlier. I suspect mostly because it was rather cold – about +10C. Women and children are known to get frosty in such temperatures pretty quickly. Not to mention a few hours stay outside.

The party ended around midnight. Overall it was good, but I wanted more. That’s why I continued at one of my favourite kitchens down in Limassol.