NOT: Gigibaba, 102 Smith St, Collingwood

Today I welcome my first ever guest blogger, Tranzie. The binary rating system is catching on! Here's her potentially controversial NOT for Gigibaba:

hey, we tried gigibaba last night and the food was so delicious, the atmosphere was great and they had a great wine list (where you could buy your wine in odd portions, like 300mL to share and match your meals).

but the meal portions were hilarious, they were so small that we both tried hard but couldn't help but laugh out loud when the food came out - $8 for one tablespoon of taramasalata and for $12 you can get HALF a quail to share between two! Interestingly the bread was also miniature.

some of the dishes were very unique and carefully prepared, like the lamb sausage felt like it had been minced by hand and was so intense and meaty. the dips were of a better quality than your usual turkish joint, but i am still not sure what to feel or whether it was worth it given it lacked that turkish generosity of portions in such a big way.

in fact, we saw the couple next to us arrive and order three dips, baba ghanoush, hommous and taramasalata (they would have paid $6 to $8 for each dip) and we stayed a bit longer at the restaurant just to see their reaction when the food came out. like us, they tried really hard to conceal shock!

i mean, i knew it would not be value for money but i didn't realise to this extent. [Jetsetting Joyce: This is the bit that made me laugh the most] after forking over $110 for a mid week meal, we went home and ate cereal because we were still so hungry. If we were that hungry, YOU would have been starving!

i think they have upped the prices since they became so popular. I read two reviews on epicure, the one of Nov 2008 said that it was GREAT value! And I think the one in Feb of this year felt similarly to the way I did, in that the servings were just so mall. SUCH a shame as if the prices were better, we'd like to frequent the place.

i guess you could have a great meal, but expect to pay what you would for 3 courses at somewhere like grossi. thought we'd let you know in case you were going to stop in for cheap mid week turkish!

Tranzie's NOT assessment is disappointing, as Gigibaba has been on my local to-do list for a while. I would be so annoyed to have gone out for dinner and then had to eat again! Especially when there are perfectly good dips and breads at Sonsa right near by.

Here's what others have said about Mini-baba:

• Fitzroyalty: Gigibaba is not a place for the famished.
• Gosstronomy: The dishes certainly weren’t mind-blowing and a bit lacking in value.
  
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