ONE of Southampton's longest-established restaurants providing a realistic taste of Greek cuisine and well known in the city's Greek Cypriot community is still family-owned, run by Demetria Andreou with help from her daughter Androulla.
You can be assured of a personal welcome and the restaurant, once in the centre of one of the oldest parts of the city, is now benefiting from refurbishment and re-decoration, being in the heart of the St Mary's regeneration area.
To the family, customers are friends and they'll take time out to make you feel at home, determined to maintain a tradition of Greek Cypriot hospitality, with simple, good value dishes.
If your taste in food is conservative, you don't need to dine on Greek specialities - but it's well worth being adventurous.
Our choice was simple - a bowl of moules mariniere or mussels, each in a sauce which is so good that I am convinced Demetria should bottle and sell it as a takeaway. It came with huge chunks of bread so that we could do justice to the sauce long after we had finished the mussels. For good measure we could not resist a plate of chips between us.
Fish does not dominate the menu, but there's always a choice like Dover sole, fillet of plaice, fillet of cod or fresh trout, calamari or king prawns.
As the name suggests, the menu wouldn't be complete without the option of a T-bone steak or a sirloin or fillet. Salads with chicken, prawn, ham or cheese run from £3.50 to £3.95. A king prawn salad is £9.95 and a Greek salad £1.95.
The Greek specialities include stefado (beef cooked in onions and wine), dolmathes (stuffed vine leaves with rice and meat) sheftalies (mince pork with garlic and spices (£6.25) and shishkebab served with rice. Yes, spaghetti is on the menu at £3.85. We finished off with a dish of water melon.
To wash it down, there's a selection of popular red and white wines and a choice of four Greek and Cyprus wines. But why not go for the house wine, at £7.50 a bottle, or £1.50 a glass? We chose the white - a pleasing chilled dry Muscadet. The bill for two came to an economical £20.80.
Reservations: 023 8022 4362.
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