Greece is The Word

Authentic Greek food is difficult to find in Britain but one Glasgow restaurant sets a very high standard, finds Joanna Blythman.

One mild irritation about eating in a taverna in Greece is that the menus are frequently theoretical.   The menu arrives.   You agonise over what you'll have, trying not to be flustered by the Greek alphabet or helpful tourist translations liked " boiled village weeds" , or " flattened cuttlefish with skint lemon" , or " ground ewe with planted egg and grape fruits" .   Someone comes to take your order, generally the younger generation of the family - the older ones are in the kitchen.   As you stumble through trying to order in Greek, they reply, often in faultless English, that sadly, what you want is not available today.   Would you like to hear what there really is to eat?   It's a strange Greek ritual which might leave you wishing the locals would cut to the chase but it does no end of good for your interpretation skills.

At Konaki in Glasgow, every dish listed seems to exist in reality.   Otherwise, it has many off the hallmarks of a Greek restaurant in Greece, that is, generous quantities of what is essentially home cooking served in an unassuming setting.   Even the prices at Konaki bear more resemblance to the modest costs of a taverna meal in Greece than the typically heavy UK restaurant spend.   They might be in euros rather than pounds, they are so accessible.   The proprietor is an enthusiastic and vigilant cretan who comes from the elegant town of xania in western crete.   Konaki has a real family feel to it and many diners are clearly repeat customers with Greek lineage so there's quite a lot of " ya sas" and " ya sou" -ing going on.   but the expat scene can't be the only reason for its popularity.   How many restaurants are already busy at 6.15 on a Saturday evening?

We started with Skordalia, the classic dish of cold pureed potato mixed with olive oil, lemon and copious quantities of garlic.   It had a pale eau-de-nil tinge from the oil and flecks of parsley and the requisite garlic hit.   It was terribly Greek, by which i mean simple, honest and delicious.   Getting into training for the main courses (we must have had some foresight into their dimensions), we chose the staple village salad, also a good refreshing example of its kind with ripe red tomatoes, properly crunchy cucumber, feta that tasted more of milk than salt and mellow, meaty olives, all sprinkled with oregano.  

The mousakka (£ 6.50) is mountainous.   it would easily serve two.   I'd like to tell you that i ate a bit then stopped, but that would be a lie.   A soft layer of potatoes, the crumbly cinnamon - spicy minced lamb, aubergines that melt in that unctuous, fleshy way that proper southern european ones should and a velvety inch-high topping of trembling, egg-enriched white sauce - this mousakka was unmissable.   And let's face it, a good mousakka is up there with good lasagne among the world's top comfort foods.

Greeks excel at slow-cooked meats, often economy cuts and here the meat in the kleftiko, a substantial lamb shank, literally fell off the bone into clear meat juices flavoured with fresh tomato and onion.   What an antidote to the current fashion.   Wost restaurants rely on last-minute frying or grilling of prime cuts.   I find that exceptionally tedious.

Fresh cod was slow-baked too in a fresh-tasting tomato sauce.   Yet each flake was opalescent and moist.   It came with oven-roasted spuds, fondant inside with an unevenly dark, crisp exterior seasoned with oregano and lots of lemon juice.   It was hard to stop eating them.   But the food at Konaki is like that.   There's too much but you can't bear to leave it.  

A more cynical restaurateur would put in baklava or kadaifi, the kind that can sit around in the fridge for several weeks without showing obvious signs of distress.   But at Konaki it's made on the premises.   Ours was warm, buttery more than sugary with yielding pastry and lots of nuts.   The galaktoboureko, or milk pie, was possibly even marginally better, a jelly-like milk custard flavoured with rosewater encased in soft thin filo.   Served with single cream, it was positively dreamy.   Konaki has some really interesting, up-market Greek wines, such as tsantali's 1998 metoxi, made by the monks of Mount Athos, a bargain at £ 18.50.   Most wines though came in around the £ 10 to £ 12 mark where a clutch of Cretan wines looks particularly worth exploring.

Konaki,
920 Sauchiehall Street,
Glasgow
 
0141-342.4010
 
Lunch:  £ 3.95     
Dinner:  £ 10 - £ 20
Food rating:  8.5 / 10

Joanna Blythman
Sunday Herald Magazine
20 April 2003