Go with Jane and Bill to a dinner at Al Sultan restaurant near the fort. It's a gathering of Jane's U3A Epicurean club. U3A standing, more or less, for university of the third age, and serving as an umbrella organisation for a set of clubs and interest groups, some educational and some mostly social, for retired people. Al Sultan is a Lebanese restaurant and we have lots of time to study the menu as we're fairly early, having allowed for the usual problems of parking in Larnaca.
The waitress recommends the meze as a variety sampler, and kindly says that we need only order for three as there's quite a lot of it. We opt for meze for four, but the girl was quite right - three would have been quite adequate and we might well have managed with two! Interesting meze, and quite different from Cypriot meze, though with some overlap, like the humus. Baba ghanoush decorated with pomegranate seeds, another aubergine starter (delicious!), a lovely okra dish (MUCH better than okra I've tasted earlier), tabouleh. There are sautéed green beans with a taste that is familiar but elusive. Bill identifies it as cinnamon. Of course! - but in an unexpected place, and, surprisingly, extremely good. After a suitable, and much needed gap for digestion, these are followed by plates of mixed grill, with various forms of chicken and lamb. We're valiant but full. Only J and I opt to try the dessert, and really only because it's included so we want a taste. He orders semolina cakes with coconut (ok) and I a rosewater custard (amazingly good!). We do only taste and then share with others along the table.
The others at the table haven't ordered the meze and haven't done nearly as well, largely because their meals take almost two hours to arrive, by which time they must have vowed never to return. Rather belatedly we realise that we might well have shared the meze in order to ward off starvation at the other end of the table! Even the entertainment by the belly dancer is insufficient distraction and we speculate that the volume of the music is designed to drown out complaints. No complaints from us, though. We had a lovely meal and at a very fair price. Would happily go again, and know what to order.