Tou Much Greek Food in Laim: A Tou Bakali Review

Welcome to Foodie Friday! This is a special weekly feature from @whatandieeats, featuring a new restaurant recommendation every week. For more tasty food photos, be sure to follow her on Instagram.

Happy Foodie Friday my fellow hungry Münchners! I have been eating out way too much these last few weeks but I don’t mind taking one for the team for you guys.

My waistline isn’t happy but everything else about me is!

This week we tried a new Greek restaurant located in Laim called Tou Bakali.

First Impressions of Tou Bakali

Tou Bakali is a cute neighborhood restaurant that feels out of place in Munich. By that I mean you walk in and immediately get teleported to a Greek island. You know what I mean right?

Those light green and blue accent colors, candlelit tables, Greek ingredients decorating the walls and the charming distressed wood of the furniture. But mainly, the smell of delicious food as soon as you walk in the door.

The restaurant was warm and inviting, with waiters ready to greet you at the door. We went around 7pm and it was already a little busy, and only got busier as the evening went on.

What was nice though was that it didn’t feel like it was crowded or that you were competing with the volume of other tables.

One of our favorite things about this place and really all Greek places are the shots they welcome you with.

Along with our menus, main courses and bill, we got three different digestives to throw back (or sip if you’re not feeling so wild).

What we Ate: Starters

We ordered quite a bit of food at this place. We just really wanted to give you a good review for this new restaurant.

… Either that or we lost our minds when reading the menu.

We tried the tomato soup, dolmadakia and the tiganita.

The dolmadakia (stuffed grape leaves) was pretty standard. I really like ordering these at Greek restaurants. At Tou Bakali, they came warm with a side of tzatziki and were super fresh and tangy.

Now, maybe I’m wrong but I feel like I remember eating them cold in a lot of places. Is this not how they are supposed to be served? DM me on Instagram if you know the right way they are supposed to be served.

The tiganita was something new for us. It was baked eggplant and zucchini filled with a thick and creamy tzatziki-esque filling. Man, was this dish tasty. It was so full of flavor and textures that it was really hard to stop eating it. But I knew I still had the main course coming.

I would definitely recommend getting this dish if you’re looking to try something new. Although it wasn’t my dish of choice I’m extremely happy it was ordered for our table.

I would say it’s also decently sized and could be eaten as a main course if you wanted to. There were three of us so we were able to share it but we did not finish it.

The tomato soup was just what we needed after a cold day.

We went on Saturday the 26th of September, you know that ridiculously cold day where it felt like ice was stabbing your face with the wind.

Well, my Fiance went to play football that day and I being the good partner that I am, went to go watch. So yeah I would say that this soup was everything we wanted and more to warm up.

As far as the flavor and texture, it was a bit too tomatoey for our taste. Usually, you order the soup and you get a bit of creaminess and some other spices but this soup was pretty liquidy and to us didn’t taste like it was spiced enough.

However, it did have some nice crunchy croutons that added a bit to the overall texture. Again though, we didn’t finish it.

Main Courses

I think we enjoyed our main courses a bit more, well at least I enjoyed mine more.

For my main dish, I got the Ko-Ko Melato which was chicken on a pan with a creamy paprika sauce along with mushrooms with a side salad and a side of rice.

Now I have to admit, I absolutely loved this dish.

The sauce was incredibly tasty and I hadn’t really tasted something like it before.

I was a bit skeptical at first but I didn’t want to order something safe like I sometimes do so I just went for something with a weird name and interesting ingredients. All in all, I’m really happy I went for it.

NOTE: This is a large dish that comes with rice and a salad. With all the food on the table, I never got around to trying the rice. Uff, I don’t know what else to tell you, other than yes to this dish, absolutely YES!

We also ordered a goat cheese salad with thyme-honey and cherry tomatoes.

This was a really simple and light dish.

I really love goat cheese – I find it to be creamy, tangy and that one cheese that just goes with everything (at least in my humble opinion). Also goat cheese and honey is the best thing in the world, just want to throw that out there.

Portion wise, this is another really big dish, but I guess if you’re only eating the salad, one person could order it and be satisfied.

Our third main course was classic moussaka. My fiance knows a thing or two about Moussaka from his Cypriot flatmate during university, so he always has high standards for this dish.

At Tou Bikala, the moussaka had a very interesting mashed potato topping, above the usual mixture of mince and aubergine. The potato crust required delicate cutting, but had a very creamy taste. We enjoyed the moussaka thoroughly, although it was a bit much after all the food we had ordered.

The portion we received was more than enough for one person.

Final Impressions

This relatively new restaurant on the block, just down the road from Laim S-Bahn station, was a delicious treat for us.

While it was refreshing to be checked-up on by waiters on the regular, it was nearly even too much. At one point we had been asked by four different waiters if they could take away one dish that we had pushed to the side.

Safety wise, we observed that out of the 3 rows of tables, the middle one was not being used presumably due to corona. Between booths, there was also plastic shielding above the seat for a little more safety.

However, this made it somewhat more unfortunate that the waiters were mainly only covering their mouths with a mask, and not their nose.

Overall, it was a nice experience and if you’re in the mood for some authentic Greek food you should give this place a try. Make sure to make a reservation first to be sure that you get a table.