Arti’s taste of Greece

(OUT & ABOUT)

I love Greek food but have rarely been satisfied outside Greece or a Greek person’s home. One time favourite was Aphrodite’s in Strathaven which in its heyday was a bustling venue for lunch and dinner with a real ethnic Greek flavour. Greek sea scenes painted onto the walls as murals, Cypriot music, a delicious array of meze and retsina all added to the atmosphere of stepping down into a cool taverna on a warm island.

Arti’s, newly opened at the back of Sam Levy’s next to the artificial waterfall, doesn’t project the same taverna like ambience, but food was pretty good if not completely Greek. Signage isn’t yet up making it a challenge to see that we were in the right place and with no-one obviously on hand to meet and greet we had to pop our heads inside the restaurant to attract attention before taking a seat on the spacious and airy verandah.
Menu is compact offering a small selection of starters, mains and desserts.

Chick pea and palm heart salad (US$6) sounded interesting, but was unfortunately not available and not that Greek. I once sampled fresh palm heart salad on a Brazilian beach — it was amazing — but not sure where you would get them here. My husband tells a story from his childhood of holidaying in a vast coconut plantation in Quelimane — and each day they would eat ‘millionaire’s salad’, hearts of palms from harvested trees. We had to settle for Greek salad (US$6) a good one, made authentically without lettuce — cucumber, tomato, peppers, olives and nice soft feta, flavoured with sprinkled oregano but a bit too much onion.

Keftedaka — aromatic meatballs also US$6, served with tzadziki were tasty but on the whole we found the selection of starters quite limited.  For me mezedes (the plural of   meze!) is one of the great pleasures of eating Greek or middle eastern style and local ingredients offer plenty of options for a more exciting and imaginative array to dip into at the beginning of a meal. One could choose a three dip platter of taromasalata (fish roe), scordalia (creamy potato and garlic) and tsadziki (cucumber and yoghurt) for a pricy US$15 — served with bread sticks and melba toast — surprising for a Greek restaurant not to offer bread.  Also on the starter section was a pastry platter (US$20) which included chicken rissois (Portuguese) , samoosas (Indian), spring rolls (Chinese)  and spinach and feta pies  (yes — Greek!) with dipping sauce.

For mains we chose chicken souvla (US$12) — chicken thighs skewered and cooked over charcoal. This was a delicious dish — thighs were moist and juicy, flavoured with a  rich tomato basting sauce with a hint of spice and served with good   chips. My son chose pastichio (also US$12) — pasta tubes layered with meat and béchamel of course not   as good as the one cooked by my friend Maria in her Greek home — but very tasty with a crisp topping. Other mains included lamb shank (US$19), beef fillet (US$16)  kingklip (US$18), pork chop and moussaka (US$12).

Ethnic confusion also reigned with the desserts (all US$5) and neither of the Greek ones — baklava nor dhaktyla, a delicious sounding concoction of lady finger biscuits filled with almonds and cinnamon, — were available. We could have opted for tiramisiu (Italian) or chocolate mousse — but decided to let the sweet things go.
We finished with espresso — a shocking US$3 for a not very strong shot of coffee. Ouch! Left something of a sour taste after what was on the whole a nice meal, but with Irene Verghis (ex Hellenic) as manager, I expect Arti’s to settle into offering good food consistently.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com