There isn’t a more in-demand restaurant in Sydney right now, but does the food (and service) live up to the hype?
14.5/20
Greek$$
Initial observations at Olympus on a Friday evening, not too long ago: this is the biggest bougainvillea I’ve ever seen in the middle of a dining room. Those sky-blue Dinosaur Designs water jugs seem heavy. Gee, it’s a long menu. Oh, hey – there’s lambs’ brains! The retractable oculus glass ceiling looks like it came off the set of Dr. No. At five separate tables, people are drinking Coca-Cola instead of wine. Is this a lot of Coke? It feels like a lot.
It’s harder to tell if five tables have ordered the fried lambs’ brains, too, but I sure hope they have. Accompanied by house-made hot sauce and a cheek of lemon, the nuggety lobes hit the right balance of crunch and cream and act as a statement of intent from Turkish-born chef Ozge Kalvo and her team: “Yes, this is a 200-seat taverna inside a $500 million lifestyle and residential precinct, but we didn’t come here to play it safe and only grill souvlaki.”
With more than 40 listed dishes, there’s still souvlaki, of course, and roasted lamb, dolmades and golden, honey-sweetened, skillet-fried kefalotyri cheese. From their many years directing Potts Point’s ever-reliable Apollo, Olympus co-owners Jonathan Barthelmess and Sam Christie know that if you serve big-flavoured Greek comfort food, people will come.
And boy, have they! Olympus opened in early December and it’s pretty much been packed with young, hyper-manicured diners ever since. If you’ve got a new outfit to Instagram, and you’re into shared menus, this is the place. (I wonder if weekend tables at Totti’s Bondi are now easier to snag?) It’s inside Wunderlich Lane on the Redfern and Surry Hills border, a good-looking, red- and brown-brick development built over the old shopping centre I once knew as “Murder Mall”.
That 50-year-old feature bougainvillea, uprooted from Bowral for the job, is one helluva centrepiece. With plenty of limestone and travertine surfaces, you almost feel as if you’re in “the heart of a bustling Greek village”, which a press release tells me is the idea.
Plenty of the mezedes (small plates) wouldn’t be out of place in downtown Vytina, either: pickled, mixed vegetables; barrel-aged feta with assertive complexity; a generous serve of taramasalata that’s not too pungent, not too light, just right. Best of the bunch is the kokkoretsi, a crumbly, rustic sort-of-rissole, rich with chopped lamb sweetbreads, belly and a ferric undertow of liver.
Chef Kalvo comes from Marrickville’s Baba’s Place and two-hatted Ester, and she’s undeniably a talent. Wild-weed spanakopita pie is made to order and features a vibrant mix of spinach, silverbeet, dill and fennel tips under crisp, eggshell-thin pastry. Thick curls of calamari are sympathetically grilled and tangy with lemon-forward ladolemono sauce. Skewers of fat and juicy pork souvlaki are bedded on a brothy combination of chickpeas, chicken jus and white pepper that could be a headline act in its own right.
But Kalvo can’t be across every dish. Other main-event proteins would have benefited from less time on the grill, such as milk-fed lamb leg and quail sweetened with roasted onions. Consistency isn’t a strong point of the floor team, either. Plates aren’t always refreshed between shared courses, including ones that leave your dinnerware highly sauced. It can be difficult to flag someone down for a drink, or a squiz at the dessert menu.
Regardless, I want to return. When Olympus is good, it’s very good: a swirling hive of frozen yoghurt cradling preserved “spoon fruits”; crunchy, salty, thumb-thick chips; sommelier Zoe Brunton’s wine list crammed with Greek and New World options. As the bougainvillea thrives in its new Sydney home, the rest of Olympus seems set to bloom with it.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Long lunch in a glamorous Greek village
Go-to dishes: Pork souvlaki ($32); kokkoretsi ($18); lambs’ brains tiganita ($16)
Drinks: Exciting Greek, French and Australian focused wine list, with party-starting cocktails designed by bartending talent Matt Whiley
Cost: About $150 for two, excluding drinks
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Callan Boys is Good Food’s national eating out and restaurant editor.
