Tuesday: Meze Day!

Tuesday meant several things.

We were exactly one week away from departing Cyprus.  And it was time to film our Meze, the through-line of the documentary we were working on for the month of June.

Filming what we needed for the Meze footage was pretty much an all day event.  Earlier Monday afternoon, Dr. Legg took Whit, Kim and Lance (our executive producer and two producers) to the location of the Meze so that they could better determine what shots would be needed and the best way to achieve them.

On Tuesday, Dr. Legg took these three students back to the restaurant and then came back to the apartments to pick up Kendra and myself.  At every shoot up until this point (the bread bakery, the cheese maker, the dessert chef, and the butcher) two students were featured on camera.  So for each set of students, we had to film them leaving the Meze and getting into a car then getting out a car and walking back to the Meze.

Kendra and I were the first two students selected (we were on camera for the cheese process), so we came to the restaurant, walked in the door a few times, walked out of the door a few times, got into the car a few more times and got out of the car several more times.  Then we were finished with our portion for the moment.

Since Lance and Kim (the two producers) were also featured in different segments (the dessert chef and the butcher, respectively), Dr. Legg and Whit asked me to stay behind and help film the remaining pairs of students.  So we repeated the same process Kendra and I had enacted for each additional pair of students, occasionally altering the angle of the shots to provide some variation.  When we finished, we had a couple of hours remaining before we actually sat down to eat and film the Meze.

The only Meze I had experienced up until this point was the non-traditional Meze at Little Plates in Limassol several weeks earlier.  So I was excited to try a more traditional Cypriot Meze.  By this time I had become familiar with a large portion of what we were eating.  I had either tried it, in some form, myself or I had witnessed someone else eating it.

The only two courses I was not prepared for, mentally or physically, were the snails and the liver.

Don't get me wrong, I've had escargot and thoroughly enjoyed it.  But adding butter, garlic and a baguette could make almost anything taste good.  In Cyprus, they serve snails in the shell with just a watery tomato sauce for flavor.  You have to pull the snail out using a toothpick, so it's always a surprise as to how big the snail actually is compared to the shell size.  I had made my mind up to try anything I was given in Cyprus because you don't know you don't like something until you've tried it.

I don't like Cypriot snails.  But I managed to eat one.

The liver was a different story.  When it came to the table it looked like a really dark, dense meat.  It didn't look particularly fatty but it did look sort of rubbery.  Rubbery is not a texture I can handle very well.  But I was willing to try.

No. It didn't happen.  I actually had to spit the liver into a napkin because I was starting to gag and couldn't swallow it.

I've never cried from trying to eat something.  But the liver made me cry.  It was, hands down, the most disgusting thing I have ever attempted to consume. And I will never try it again.

Overall, though, the Meze was really delightful.  We had salad, tahini and tzatziki dipping sauces, mushrooms in commandaria wine (which I didn't particularly care for, but was able to eat one), kleftiko, sheftalia, stuffed vegetables, couscous, spinach, souvlaki, souvla, bread, and a sugar coated dessert pastry filled with some type of cheese (which wasn't particularly flavorful).

I'm definitely glad I got to experience a traditional Cypriot Meze, even if some of the tastes aren't so agreeable with me.