The Greeks and a County Wicklow lady
WHEN YOU'VE SEEN one Greek resstaurant you've seen them all. Is that your idea? Suppose you've just come back from a never-to-be-forgotten holiiday on a deserted Greek Island - with a traditional taverna frequented only by local musicians, donkeys and you, and deserted by everyone except you, and a cast of thousands. You want to relive the memory of the 'valley of the nighttingales', the "cicada twilight", or whattever twaddle the tourist operators have filled your mind with - and you want to recreate the slim sun-bleached you that you think your package deal included. Altogether, before our Indo-Irish summer plays its last sunset tattoo, you want to remind yourself of sun, sunset and souvlaki. By Peter Pumpkin
And how do you do that in Dublin?
How do you recapture the atmosphere, the seduction scene where you succcumbed to the temptations of a cheap holiday away from the folks back home? - please note the unisex quality of this article.
Dublin is very poor in Greek restauurants - or for that matter in anything other than Chinese, Italian or French, all with Irish cuisine - the chop suey and chips syndrome - but given some manaagerial flairTt shouldn't be too difficult to create an atmosphere, considering that the weather in recent summers has been benevolent, and in winter is no worse than the outrageous downpours which beset the Greek islands.
Pumpkin visited two 'Greek' restauurants this month - Zorba's in Baggot Street (formerly the Kilimanjaro) and the Acropolis (formerly a sandwich-bar converted from a launderette, beside Searsons). In Zorba's we both went for the Zorba's Special, a surprisingly filling three-course meal for £3.95 each, with six generous starters (hournous, taramaasalata, dolmades, meat balls, fetta and olives. and cucumber and youghourt), four second course dishes (liver cooked in oil and lemon, beef stewed in wine and honey, squid and whitebait) followwed by kebabs and vegetables. Wines are reasonably priced at around £3 - £4 for Greek wines, including Demestika, (which does not kill all known germs), Retsina, Kolossi, etc., and French and German wines for the less welled.
The sweet trolley at approximately 8Sp included halva and a wide range of fresh fruits. The enthusiastic service slowed down noticably as the evening went on, the plates were cold/and things "could have been organised better".
At the Acropolis, a family-run affair at the wrong end of Baggot Street, food was more authentic - the houmous (puree of chick peas) and taramasalata (ditto of smoked cod's roe) tasted more of the main ingredients, and were acccompanied by real pita - hot Greek bread.
The Acropolis is in the process of changing its menus and therefore has a limited selection but in its bid for authenticity has courageously cut out the 'European' dishes - prawn cocktail, smoked salmon and the other pseudooFlash Harry items that have no place in a Greek menu. Peter had a Shashlik @beef kebabs with pepper and wine sauce - and Petra went for Afelia - pork fillets pan fried with spices and wine in butter, both of which were delicious, although the side salads were over-expensive at around £1. Wines were slightly dearer than at Zorba's, and- the sweets were not appetising or adventurous, although they might have appealed to the ginnand-tonic belt.
Zorb a's won out on decor, and both had the same quite acceptable backkground buzz and fuzz of Napa Mouskouri and the Athenians. The Acropolis also serves a "special" which has the advantage of being available in separate courses, so you can share a mixed starter and then pursue separate main courses. Ireland has one thing to be. thankful for - the lady in County Wicklow who keeps goats and thus is able to supply almost authentic fetta cheese copsewood.