Olympic gold in Hoxton

Sitting in the kitchen of a house in the Peloponnese, I'm leafing through a newly published book called The Real Greek at Home, by Theodore Kyriakou and Charles Campion (Mitchell Beazley, £20) while deciding what to buy for supper.

In the chapter headed Dishes from the Mountains - the house is on the slopes of the Taygetos range - I could choose pork and pickled cabbage casserole but stupidly have neglected to pickle any cabbage. Calf's tongue with okra sounds wonderful - the recipe compares it to crubeens, the Irish dish - but my Greek is not up to asking for a calf 's tongue from the butcher.

It is for dishes of this kind that London is so fortunate to have Kyriakou's restaurant The Real Greek (I think I'll be doing the marinated shoulder of lamb roasted over potatoes).

The cooking at The Real Greek is the sort you find in a lovingly tended home kitchen rather than in a tourist taverna. It has mostly averted its face from public gaze, much as a virtuous young Greek woman was once obliged to do. Anyone new to it, or only ever exposed to Greek holiday food, will be surprised by the variation, healthiness, subtlety and the regional constructs.

Before I left London, I took my friend, Luke Mangan, one of Sydney's most inspired chefs, to dinner at The Real Greek. He liked the serious, restrained feel of the dining room, which has acquired a serene patina of restaurant age, as well as the look of the menu.

An ideal route into the possibilities is to order meze combinations. Plates ranging in price from £7.90 to £8.25 hold three or four items, which mix protein - say, pork terrine and the sharp, spicy cheese purée called tirokafteri - with pulses such as giant butter beans from Kastoria and a vegetable-like yellow pumpkin with spring onions and herbs prepared to a recipe from Thrace.

A different plateful features deliciously smoky, chargrilled chunks of octopus tentacle, slices of the cured beef called pastourma, little crisp cakes of mashed potato mixed with taramasalata - a great combination - and beetroots in a yogurt-and-walnut dressing.

Luke thought that the lamb, served with trahana - a dried pebble-like pasta made with yogurt or buttermilk - and purslane, was a bit tough. To murmur "how authentic" would have been taking Grecophilia a step too far.

But I will stick up for the trahana, which had a lovely sloppy piquancy. When you buy mince at a butcher's in Greece, it will be minced to order and put through the machine twice. Further pounding at home with a special brass implement produces the desired, closely-knitted texture. The baked "steak haché" had just this texture, which matched well the dense, reliable chickpeas, casseroled here in Spartan style.

If you didn't like it, Theodore makes the point in his book that being Spartan about food brings with it a philosophical obligation - the food on the plate is set before us by God, so whatever is offered, you must eat rather than risk offending the Almighty. Tell that to your children when you give them chickpeas instead of chips.