Taverna was created in a hurry, but it’s instantly timeless. And there’s a lot of Hellenic history here.
14.5/20
Greek$$
While you’re sitting in Taverna, enjoying the buzz, most likely swiping torn bits of house-baked bread through another plate of olive oily, lemony, salty deliciousness, you may see the two owners of this new and instantly timeless taverna throw each other some wry side-eye. How on earth did this happen?
Guy Holder and Angie Giannakodakis created the restaurant in a hurry. Last December, after 12 years, they called time on Epocha, their grand European salon on Rathdowne Street, Carlton. As the pair wound the business down, they experimented with a Greek concept: simple food modestly priced; old-school but fit for these times. It had legs.
This Brunswick East site kept whispering to them. They grabbed it and called on favours – not least from their staff, who all came across, along with the furniture – to open by the start of February.
It’s the second time Giannakodakis has launched a restaurant on this corner. She was a key member of team Hellenic Republic, the George Calombaris love letter to Greek culture that drew crowds in 2008.
Giannakodakis considered that history and many others as she painted the place pre-opening, turning dark walls into a dazzling optimistic white. Thoughts of her father, Anesti – a house painter whom she’d just lost – kept her steady on ladders; “I talked to him,” she told me. Thoughts of her mother, Katina, an exacting cook moved recently into care, focused her efforts, too. She considered the push and pull of her storied Greek and Cretan heritage. She pondered friendships.
Her longtime collaborator, Holder, has been in the business of looking after people since he was 15 and washing dishes at an English golf club. They’ve been joined by the warm, all-seeing Chrysa Kogkou as manager.
Everything is threaded with salt and olive oil, bringing individual dishes to life and also knitting them together.
Restaurants run from the dining floor often feel more hospitable, driven by guest experience rather than having food as the hero. That makes sense here, in a place modelled on an Athenian taverna, explicitly a forum for sharing wine and humble nourishment.
Whether you’re sipping ouzo or frisky assyrtiko (a Greek white wine), the feeling is the thing, bound by philoxenia, the powerful idea of being a friend to a stranger.
The food matters, of course it does, as everyday as sunrise and as beautiful and profound. Ingredients are cooked sensitively to produce a mellow synthesis of flavours.
You might build a meal around vegetables. Beetroot is cooked to soft sweetness, tumbled with its stalks, piled on soft white cheese and scattered with toasted walnuts. The pickles are bracing. Potato wedges fried in herb oil are pure happiness. A salad of torn lettuce, cucumber, dill and spring onion is a crunchy, culinary rebetiko.
But also, Cretan-style smoked pork loin is shaved extra thinly and scattered with pickled fennel. Flathead tail is grilled just right so it’s slightly sticky with a bit of pert pull. Lamb shoulder is roasted to collapse for abandoned destruction with forks.
Everything is threaded with salt and olive oil, bringing individual dishes to life and also knitting them together.
The house yoghurt is dolloped into a bowl and studded with shards of baklava pastry. You should have the bougatsa, carved at the table, shatter-crisp filo pushed into the custard within.
Taverna is a new restaurant with lovely, old ideas, built on mythology and basic hard work. It’s a pacey, informal and precious paean to gathering with feeling.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Rollicking Athenian party
Go-to dishes: Patzari (beetroot, galotyri, walnuts, $16); fava, capers and shallots ($12); bougatsa ($24)
Drinks: Taverna opened without a liquor license and quickly learnt to ace the mocktails. Now you can have the watermelon mint cooler with gin or vodka too. Greek wine, beer and ouzo are served with love and enthusiasm.
Cost: About $140 for 2 people, excluding drinks
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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