Completing the Greek makeover

This review was first published in November 2001

Theodore Kyriakou's The Real Greek in Hoxton put paid once and for all to the plate-smashing, moussaka-bashing clich&es that have been associated with his native cuisine. These misconceptions have been largely based on the Greek Cypriot cooking we're more familiar with, but this is a whole other ball game: a labour of love, combining fresh, authentic ingredients with the heritage of real Greek home-cooking.

As a result, the restaurant in Hoxton Market has been justifiably successful, its formula of laid-back comfort and eye-opening flavours drawing appreciative hordes.

To accommodate his fans, Kyriakou has just opened a Mezedopolio, or place dedicated to mezedes: as the menu explains, 'a range of small dishes eaten as appetisers ... each combining three or four small bites'.

There's a real Hoxton feel to the design - a combination of the perfunctory, the slightly grungey and the inspired. It seems a little forbidding at first, but you quickly relax into it. Brickwork and ducting are exposed; furniture is kind of 1970s brasserie with bentwood chairs and marble-topped tables; there's a dramatic, circular bar framed with many test-tube shaped lights; and one wall is almost quasi-religious, with its arched, icon shape and stained glass.

The clientele is equally eclectic, all ages, all shapes and sizes, united by an understated sense of style (that's obviously with the exception of my own self).

We ordered what appeared to be a ludicrously inflated list of dishes from the 30-odd on the mezedes menu; most are priced at between £3 and £6. In fact, though we did go a little over the top, the dishes are quite small; plus, it's advisable to pile up a few choices to get a real taste of what's on offer.

It's not an overstatement to say some of them contained flavours I'd never encountered, particularly the likes of a small bucket-shaped pile of chicken preserved in oil and laced with walnuts originating from Asia Minor; or soutzouki, a rather terrifyingly intense, dark purple beef sausage, spiced in the Armenian style.

It was for this latter that the expression 'a little goes a long way' might have been coined. Pastourma, sliced fillet of beef cured with Middle Eastern spices, was also a blast of the unusual: the beef chewy and dense, the spices hot, astringent and medicinally aromatic.

Dish after dish brought intriguing flavours: fava was a bland, silky pur»e of yellow split peas; skordalia - a potato and garlic dip - a solid and searingly garlicky version of this Greek taverna staple; tirokafteri, a herby sludge of feta, olive oil and flat leaf parsley more usually made with hot peppers; kefalotiri - fried, pungent, springy cheese with an addictive depth of flavour, far better than the rubber banality of halloumi. These all came anointed with a hefty glug of grassy olive oil.

Unmissable are salt cod fritters, the fish moist and savoury with gorgeously light batter; and massive prawns cooked in tomatoes and feta, the cheese melting into the juices to create a truly sensational sauce. And excellent bread, crusted with sea salt and laced with rosemary and sultanas.

The Mezodopolio leads off the original restaurant, in what used to be Hoxton's Christian Mission; there's something simultaneously decadent and unnerving about swilling several carafes of (interesting) Greek wine under the beady eye - and what appeared to be the gravestone - of the Mission's founder. And it's also quite apt: with his dedication to authentic Greek food, Kyriakou seems to be a man on a mission himself.