Like Greece, if you close your eyes: Mykonos Taverna

 19 April 2024

 

MYKONOS TAVERNA

7 Vineyard Road, Claremont, Cape Town

 

In a rare moment of lucidity, I had a restaurant related epiphany about our meal tonight.

 

A place like Mykonos is not only named for a well-known over-visited tourist trap island but also offers the over familiar clichés of Greek cuisine, like the various mezze items, moussska, yuvetsi, variations on Greek lamb, baklava, souvlaki, schwarma, and so on. Oh, and some South African things too.

 

I’m sure Greek cuisine must be far broader in range and more interesting than the limited number of items that we know so well, yet those are our options, whether we’re tourists in Greece or eat “Greek” in Cape Town.

 

The wife and I love this style of food (in fact, she remarked tonight that she might well prefer it above Spanish cuisine)  and if it’s done well, no matter how clichéd it is, it’s tasty and satisfying and Mykonos did what it said on the box tonight.

The restaurant is huge, nothing like the small, chef patron style tavernas we ate at in Greece, and noisy. The “Greek island style” element is provided by the turquoise blue wooden chairs and the white paper covers over the table cloths.

 

There is a wide range of mezzes, a good variety of main courses (vegetarian, meat and seafood) and a dessert  offering heavy on baklava flavours but also with a choc malva, ice cream with Bar One sauce and a Bar One cheesecake, to appease the locals who don’t care for Greek desserts.

 

Finally, there are 5 platters ranging in price from R320,00 to R750,00; one of which (Mykonos mezze platter) is for 2 or 4 people and one (Santorini grill platter) for 4 people only, while the rest seem to be strictly for 2 people.

 

We ordered bubbly and studied the menu intently. I pointed out to the wife that we tend to make the mistake of over ordering on the small plates but still insist on main courses and desserts and end up uncomfortably full but not being able to eat everything we ordered and suggested we stick to mezze, as that is usually where our passion for Greek food lies.

 

The compromise solution was the Mykonos mezze platter (R320) and the lamb and hallouni pies (R65) as main course.

The platter comprises one, quartered pita bread (we ordered an additional one), tzatziki (which we swapped for taramasalata), hummus, melantzanes sto fourno, fried haloumi, dolmades, keftedes, chicken skewers and calamari tentacles.

 

There were three bummers:

 

1.    We asked for taramasalata instead of tzatziki because we don’t like the latter but the taramasalata wasn’t up to scratch with, as the wife described it, an unpleasant, sharp artificial taste as if the restaurant had bought it in from a dubious supplier.

 

2.    The hummus was good but there was an overwhelming lemon taste to it.

 

3.    The calamari tentacles had gone cold and had lost the characteristic crispness by the time we ate them, but that was our fault for leaving them until last.

 

Other than that, the platter was superb and the lamb and halloumi pies were a revelation, with the thinnest, most delicate phyllo pastry and extremely tasty fillings. The look like samosas but are in a different class altogether.

 

For me, the fried halloumi, with a light, crisp batter was my favourite thing on the platter and for the wife it was the grilled chicken skewers that was succulent and tender and with the heady aroma of grilled meat. It is a skill of note to grill chicken like that and not dry it out.

 

It's difficult to pick out real highlights though, as everuthing was so good. The keftedes were well cooked and still juicy, the melantzane was smooth and slightly sweet and the dolmades were good, even if they aren’t my best Mediterranean thing to eat.

 

 The wife and I disagreed on the pita. She would’ve preferred them crisp whereas I thought the soft, floury texture was perfect. Dif’rent strokes.

 

The wife chose the choc malva (R65) as her dessert and I went for the ravani (R65), “a crumbly decandent (sic) Greek orange cake,” accompanied by Greek coffee.

Chocolate malva pudding is a modern day mutation of a my favourite classic dessert (the good ol’ traditional malva) and I don’t care for the choc version much but I must admit that this dessert was quite decent, as it had the bottom notes of malva with deep chocolate flavour and the texture of a lava cake without the liquid centre. As chocolate cake desserts go, I suppose it’l hit the spot with chocoholics. 

 

The orange cake was in a different class. It crumbled and was deeply infused with orange syrup that became a tad cloying over the course but was delightful. The wife tried one spoonful and fell in love;  we swapped desserts.   

The dessert portions (each came with ice cream) were generous and, for example, the Greek orange cake perfect for sharing to avoid that overload of sweetness at the end.

 

The Greek coffee was proper. 

The bill (including a bottle of sparkling water, two glasses of bubbly and the coffee) came to a quite reasonable R740,00 before tip.

 

We ate well, the service was good and the ambience, if a tad loud at times, was festive. Will we hurry back? Other than  for the wife’s yen for more Greek orange cake, I suppose not. The food was good and highly enjoyable without being compelling.  It just made us nostalgic for Greece.