Defaulted on Thayer, Providence, RI, July 2011

Greece may have almost defaulted but I had enough liquidity to get myself over to a Greek restaurant on Thayer Street, Providence. Andrea's Restaurant was actually the place where I made up my mind to move to the crazy city of Providence. I must have bitten on a very pickled chilli that gave me severe enough brain cramp to come to that decision. Anyway, here I was again with a real life Greek person. She was not wearing a gas mask and throwing molotov cocktails. Unfortunate.

The interior has a hint of art deco about it with the booths and the busy waitresses whizzing around like worker bees looking for tips. We were stuck in the anteroom away from all the other patrons, and consequently escaped the radar of our rotund waitress. Prior to my moussaka, I had a Greek salad that consisted of the standard rabbit food. The thing that made it Greek was the sprinkle of feta cheese and one olive. Yes, one paltry olive. One olive does not make a salad a Greek salad. Even Mr. Papandreou would have scoffed at this austerity measure. Luckily my Moussaka, like the House of Representatives swooping like a caped crusader, saved the day at the last minute. It has been a while since I had moussaka- not since the glory days of being treated by the Bank of Mum and Dad with dinner at Mayday Hospital. This was pretty good. It did, however, have the specific heat capacity of water though, which was no bad thing. The aubergine was quite firm and the minced lamb was spiced sufficiently not to make you smell or taste like a drunk Brit on a Friday night. This would have been perfect for a cold winter's day to warm your cockles and leave you grinning like a smug Capitol Hill. Good thing the AC was on Arctic adding more greenback to the deficit then. With the reprieve, however, there is always going to be a backlash somewhere down the road. That backlash was in the form of the service. It was atrocious. Our waitress had as much class as a Katie Price fantasy.

The Ho Down says: Woo!-ssaka.