I love restaurants where there are dozens of unpronounceable dishes on the menu and where it takes twenty minutes to figure out which one looks the best, since they all look appealing. Othello is just such a place. We've been here more than once, before we started this review site, and through the magic of Dave's random chance ("pick a number!") we ended up here again.
Decor is open and airy inside, and courtyard-like outside (subject to the whims of the weather, of course). It's the kind of place where you can imagine long tables full of noisy people celebrating good food, good friends, and the fact that the awful guy from accounting has finally quit the company (this is the CBD, after all). The dining room is so open that it tends towards the chilly side, actually. The chairs are comfy enough, if a bit fragile (several showed signs of having been repaired, and a man at the table next to ours actually broke his).
Service can be a bit slow, at lunchtime anyway, because they don't seem to have enough staff on the floor, even for the sparse crowd that seems to show up on Fridays. Perhaps they get busier later in the day, and employ more people then.
The food, however, is superb. At least to our untrained palates - we didn't grow up eating Greek food. Dave ordered the Chicken Corfu, which was almost like a Greek curry, with tender chicken breast swimming in a creamy tomato sauce and lots of fresh veggies on the side. Very nice. I had three entrees, or "mezethes": Pastourma (spicy sausage), Dolmades (vine-leaf wrapped mince and rice), and Othello Fantasia (kind of like a stew with fetta cheese, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli and olives). The Othello Fantasia was the best of the lot - a generous serve and very flavourful and spicy. The Pastourma was a little bit drier than I remembered from last time, but still worth ordering. The Dolmades was a slight disappointment, lacking some of the zest of the other two dishes. Perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be.
We had some wine: Dave had the Stonefish Merlot and I had the Montara Estate Shiraz-Pinot. Didn't knock our socks off but they were drinkable enough.
I was too full to order dessert so I settled for a Greek Coffee - thick, sweet and almost like a paste at the bottom of the cup. Just right! Dave ordered the Galatoboureko, which is a custard tart covered in honey. He liked it.
Prices were in keeping with the location - mains were around $15 to $20, and most entrees less than $10.
We forgot to check out the toilets on this visit. I can't remember what they're like from eariler visits.
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Dave's summary: "I can't pronounce anything on the menu, but I enjoyed my meal."
Probability that we will return: 35 / 42
Note that the probability rating is affected by the fact that there are hundreds of places to eat around here.