Going Greek at Omilo

 22 February 2025

 

OMILO GREEK KITCHEN

The Riverlands Mall, Observatory, Cape Town

 

If you’ve ever eaten a simple, tasty, nourishing and tourist budget friendly meal at a quaint, old-fashioned, slightly faded taverna in a fishing harbour town that time has passed by on some obscure Greek island, don’t be expecting those cosy family kitchen vibes at Omilio.

 

The food may bear some relation to that taverna’s fare but it’s on a whole different level and quaint ain’t the look the interior decorator aimed for.

 

We’re talking laid back upmarket here with nary a torn fishing net, splintered oar or cracked buoy in sight.

 

I hadn’t heard of The Riverlands Mall until I googled the location of Omilio and was pleasantly surprised that it’s only about 12 minutes from our humble abode by car on an early Saturday night. It’ll probably be easier and quicker to reach than the V & A Waterfront on a weekend.

 

The Mall is on the site of the long gone, beloved River Club, that’s disappeared from sight as if had never existed, not far from the newly built Amazon World Headquarters building, and isn’t yet fully complete in either construction and occupancy. It’s blissful finding parking easily in the vast underground parking garage.

 

Omilio is on the other end of the Mall from the Checkers where we emerged from the depths of Mordor and it’s quite the pleasant stroll along a broad corridor with bright, shiny new emporiums all awaiting the hordes of shoppers that will swarm the passages one day.

 

It's not often that one has the privilege of venturing into a hardly used shopping mall.

 

Omilio is very modern, open and spacious restaurant that immediately brought “Jo’burg” (and all that the word implies in the hospitality industry in Gauteng) to Von-Mari’s mind and she has a point. It’s vast, chic, not cheap,  the portions are lavish and, at least tonight, there’s a large squad of servers.

 

There is outside seating looking, I guess, westward towards the sunset in the distance, if you don’t mind the other new constructs in the near vicinity. The interior is spacious and open, with simple wooden tables and chairs and banquette seating, where we sat, along the side wall with a huge Omilio logo. 

 

The shape of the space is a vague L, with the service counters and kitchen in the elbow.  Some guy, the owner or manager, stood at the pass, looking out at the room, shouting out the orders as they came in and it was somewhat disturbing.  On the one hand, this noise signified the efficiency of the operation yet on the other hand, we’ve become used to kitchens where the brigade operates in almost deathly quiet. 

 

The restaurant doesn’t yet have a liquor licence, an odd situation for this kind of upmarket eatery and I trust it’s lawyers are making work of this anomaly even as we speak, but it gave us the opportunity to take our own bottle of bubbly and to save a couple of pence on the bill.  The ice bucket was a relatively shallow glass bowl which had probably not entered this world with the ambition of being a receptable for ice and bottles of wine.

 

The menu is printed on a sizable sheet of paper, probably about A2 size, with dips, mezze and salads on one half and the main courses on the other. Spoilt for choice you definitely are.

 

Having been burnt on this issue before, we didn’t go mental ordering starters and stuck with just tirosalata (blended Feta, roasted peppers and chilli) (R65)

and pita bread (R24),

pickled octopus  (R115)

and ouzo gravlax salmon (R155).

 

The tirosalata visually resembled a large fried egg  and was smooth, creamy, subtly piquant and went perfectly with the hot pita quarters.

 

There was a kind of membrane on the salmon that was disconcerting until Von-Mari  removed it and then it was a delicious dish, with the almost buttery texture of cured salmon. The pickled squid was scrumptious; subtly vinegary and refreshing and tender and juicy.

 

The starters were a triumvirate of supreme delectability.

 

My choice for main course was the charcoal grilled pork belly served with  rainbow carrots and apple cream (R235), and I added a side of lemon potatoes. Von-Mari chose the oven baked lamb shoulder (R340). The menu says the latter would be served with spaghetti but it was actually served with orzo. Did the kitchen run out of spaghetti? 

 

Ultimately, I regretted choosing the pork belly. Some years ago I swore never to order it at a restaurant again after a final straw of a sub-standard belly. Last weekend I violated my oath at La Belle at the Alphen Hotel and  decided to try their belly with pomme puree. For a rather steep price, not to dissimilar to what Omilio charges, I was served a dish where the small piece of (admittedly well-cooked) meat was topped by an iceberg sized hunk of fat, more than double the size of the meat, that made the whole thing visually resemble a lemon meringue tart.  I don’t mind fatty meat but that was taking the piss.

 

Okay, fair play, the Omilio pork belly is nothing like the La Belle travesty. For one thing, there’s no fat. For another, one is served three substantial cubes of well grilled pork. 

 

Unfortunately, the dish arrived at the table considerably cooler than it ought to have been, as if the plate had been standing on the pass for a while, and quickly cooled down even further so that the meat was cold by the time I reached the third chunk. Before that, the pork was tender, tasty and yummy but at the end I simply ate out of a sense of “waste not, want not.”  

 

A generous portion is not to be sniffed at but in this instance, the pork belly was just too much. Half as much at a lower price would be more than adequate.

 

The rainbow carrots were perfectly grilled, al dente and sweetness contrasting nicely with the grill smokiness and the lemon potatoes were crisp, buttery and exhilaratingly redolent of lemon, probably the best fries / wedges I’ve had in a while. 

The lamb shoulder was served a good few minutes after I’d received my pork belly, which seems to be a basic error in service, and this made it all the more odd that my dish was already lukewarm on service whereas the lamb was piping hot.

 

This dish, too, is a very generous portion that Von-Mari couldn’t finish and it wasn’t for lack of trying.  According to her, it was the best thing she’d eaten in a very long time and she could barely see the plate in front of her through the tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

 

She is well keen on a piece of slow cooked lamb.

 

The lamb was tender and deeply flavoursome and the tomato sauce on the orzo was exquisite.

 

My dessert was the bougatsa (R90), described as a blueberry and lemon Greek custard pie, in phylo pastry;   yummy.

Von-Mari chose the lemon cake (portokalopita) (R110)

and almost cried again. The portions were huge. I finished my dessert and Von-Mari took half of hers (along with about half of her main course) home and ordered a slice of the baklava cheesecake (R135) to take home too. I felt like a food foster parent.

 

The cheesecake (which we scoffed the next day) was excellent though, for me, the honey soaked baklava in which the cheesecake was wrapped was excessively, cloyingly sweet and wholly unnecessary.

 

The total bill, including two cappuccinos and an espresso, came to R1363,00 before tip.

 

Omilio is a lovely restaurant, especially on an early summer’s evening as the last rays of sunlight bathed the interior and slowly faded. The service was impeccable (with only the failure to serve the main dishes simultaneously as an issue) and our server was a joyful guy. The food is of a patently high standard and quality and one can’t complain about portion size.