Where to eat Greek food in Sydney
15 Greek restaurants in Sydney
Much like Melbourne, Sydney holds one of the most authentic and high-quality Greek restaurant scenes outside of Greece. Here are all the spots where I found that to be the case.
While our guide to Greek food in Melbourne is a lot more comprehensive, this is a list of the 15 Greek spots I managed to visit in Sydney. All, in some way, impressed, albeit to varying degrees. In order to be fair, I also give you a list of the Greek spots in Sydney that are high up on my list for next time, based on trustworthy recommendations from our local friends, both in the industry and in the Greek community. You can see them below.
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Australia’s geographic remoteness and subsequent dependency on domestic produce means that it's actually very easy to find Greek cuisine in its most fundamental form: high-quality, locally-sourced produce, cooked with patience and few ingredients. Australia’s remoteness perhaps also encouraged Greek Australians to recreate their culinary traditions in their truest, most authentic forms, while also adapting recipes to whatever ingredients they had at their disposal (like making more use of Australia’s abundance of lamb). However, factor 21st-century supply chains into the equation, and Australia now also has access to authentic, bona fide produce from Greece and Cyprus, with projects like Niko’s Garden even offering Greek herbs and greens. The combination of the first generations of Greek Australians’ best efforts to protect their culture together with modern-day access to authentic ingredients means that Australia’s Greek food scene is in great shape. It’s incredibly easy to find good and authentic Greek food in Australia – much, much easier than it is in London, for example.
In fact, some Greek products are arguably more authentic in Australia than they are in Greece nowadays. Australia’s Greek yoghurt is more sour and closer to the traditional sheep’s milk yoghurt of our grandparents’ generation than the creamier, milder-flavoured yoghurt that is most popular in Europe today. While in Greece and much of Europe, the alarmingly homogenising trend of factory-prepared gyros and souvlakia is slowly outstripping in-house processes, handmade gyros and souvlakia are the defaults in Australia. The quality can vary, but it’s hard to go wrong with fresh, handmade gyros cooked over charcoal (charcoal-grilled gyros being another thing you don’t actually see that often in Greece). Likewise, there are as many souvlatzidika and gyradika in this guide that make their own pita breads in-house as I have ever found across Greece and Europe.
Whereas a soberingly large number of Europe’s Greek bakeries also fall into the commercial trap of sourcing frozen, pre-made pites (pies) from factories and wholesalers, it’s hard to find a Greek bakery or restaurant in Australia that doesn’t make its own spanakopites or tyropites. Overall, the same is true of most of Australia’s Greek food, but in cases where you do want those authentic Greek imports, all the main authentic pantry goods and alcoholic beverages are available through companies like The Greek Providore. Plus, with its world-renowned coffee scene, freddo espresso/cappuccino, frappe and Greek coffee are all highly dependable in most Greek coffee shops and bakeries. Newer Greek-Australian coffee brands like Melvourni also offer more quality options on the market in addition to Greek-Australian pulverised coffee brand Oasis. The only thing you don’t find as often yet is the thinner freddo straw, although there are some coffee shops that use it.
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Gyros is more popular than souvlaki skewers (aka kalamakia) in Australia. It’s most commonly prepared by hand and cooked horizontally over charcoal, and souvlatzides will typically cut it by hand using a knife. Sometimes, you see slightly thicker cuts which might resemble kontosouvli, but it works well. The main difference is that lamb and chicken are the main two options for gyros in Australia, with pork being the default in Greece and chicken the alternative. Of course, this guide also includes spots where you can find traditional pork gyros in Melbourne and Sydney (not all use charcoal either, which is fine, ceteris paribus).
One thing you can’t find as easily in Australia yet is proper, traditional pork kalamakia/souvlakia. Especially not the traditional, thin, rectangular kalamakia that epitomised Greek souvlakia in the 20th Century, and that older generations still nostalgically reminisce over as the best they ate. It’s another tradition that is also fast fading in Greece – not because it can’t be done, but because the Australian market is more attuned to lamb and chicken. That said, here you can see the pork souvlakia I made with the Yitonia crew in Kangaroo Valley one night (it’s possible). (We also made kangaroo souvlaki here.)
Although most Australian pites might not precisely resemble the traditional Athenian or average Greek pita souvlaki, by and large, Australians usually adhere to the Athenian terminology: they refer to the pita as a whole as ‘souvlaki’, which is often shortened to ‘souv’ or ‘souva’ (regardless of whether it’s filled with gyros, souvlaki or other meats like bifteki). Occasionally, you’ll hear the pita of gyros being referred to simply as ‘gyros’ too.
The average Australian pita wrap is usually longer, with the volume of a pita gyros as you’ll find it in Thessaloniki, but with the thinner, conical shape of its relatively smaller Athenian counterparts. Many Australian gyradika commonly add lettuce too – a quintessentially Greek-Australian quirk, which you only occasionally see with chicken gyros pites in more modern gyradika in Greece. While the first pitogyro or gyros wrap (‘souvs’) that appeared in Australia in the 20th Century were made using a thinner pita bread that is closer to a Lebanese flatbread or even the ‘ladopita’ used on islands like Rhodes, good-quality, handmade pites feature often throughout Australia’s Greek hospitality scene, in all their forms.
Before you take a look at the guides below, I’ll leave you with my lasting impression after a month in Australia: meraki, kefi and filotimo sum up everything Greek Australians do, and there's an overwhelming theme of competence and care for the final product here amongst restaurant owners and their entire teams, Greek or non-Greek. The Greek spots in this guide below reflect that.
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Olympic Meats, Marrickville: the model Greek grill
In the 34 months that I’ve been running Souvlakination, Olympic Meats is the only restaurant I’ve chosen to write about without ever having visited. Not because anyone asked me to – in fact, I asked to. (You can read what I wrote in its launch week at the end of February 2025 here.)
The reason is that Olympic Meats is a global outlier in the Greek food scene. We’re all familiar with the concept of a Greek grill, or psistaria, with its souvles, grilled specials, and often mageirefta too. While Olympic Meats fits that description, it does something differently to most: it brings the real ethos and philosophy of ‘the village’ and, with it, the very foundational building blocks of Greek cuisine, into the modern urban world.
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To set the sobering context: the very foundational building blocks of Greek and Cypriot cuisine – and the Mediterranean diet itself – are sinking at an alarming rate, and it’s increasingly unlikely that our children will easily get to experience Greek food in the way that we know and love it. In what we call the most developed Western economies (viz. in the US, UK, Europe and in parts of Australia), we’re seeing – in the best case scenario – a premiumisation of real, naturally-grown, de facto-organic ingredients that pack flavour and nutrients and form the basis of all good food, let alone good Greek food.
At the same time, our agricultural sectors are shrinking, the financial challenges threatening the very existence of independent business ownership and, therefore, local economies are rising, meaning that the very people who are able to produce and cook good food for a livelihood are fading simultaneously (especially in London where I grew up). That resultant vacuum is being filled by large supermarkets and chains, large commercial farms who intensively produce at scale and use practices that we know harm us and our planet, and the proliferation of processed, ultra-processed and synthetic foods. With that, we lose the very foundations of our cuisine, and it’s incredibly important that we support the people cutting against the grain and guarding Thermopyles – by championing them, documenting them for future readers to understand, and for current readers to go and support them too.
As these developments are accelerating in the Mediterranean too, it’s all the more important that we support everybody standing their ground and doing the opposite, and our number one spot in this list leads the way in that department.
Timothy Cassimatis has been cooking since 2009 and – with Greek roots, an upbringing that has bequeathed to him his grandparents culinary traditions, and an infectious passion for Greek food and its undersung treasures – is now setting the bar for how Greek hospitality businesses should behave in the 21st Century, if they have an interest in preserving the very thing it is they claim to represent. Tim makes his own vinegar. He makes his own loukanika from scratch. He and his team make the pita breads in house and cook them in a woodfire oven. Even his olive is the product of a friend who produces olive oil in Australia. All of this in itself is incredibly rare in the diaspora, and a dying art in Greece.
I mean this in the best way possible: Tim is like a mad scientist. He runs his grill like clockwork, with a meticulousness and unrelenting focus. His kitchen is full of all sorts of containers and concoctions of home made pickles, herbs and spices that most Greeks and Cypriots don’t even know are a part of their cuisine. While I’m here, he pulls out a container of ssinia, the lentisk seeds that are particularly popular in Cyprus, and commonly used in loukanika (Cypriots also make ssinopites). His tyrokafteri is bold and alive, with a rare green hue from the green chilli peppers that many hide with paprika, chilli or similar. His gyros and kontosouvli glisten over jumping flames, with an occasional basting to maintain that rich, caramel Michelangelo-frescoe of a salty, delicious, moreish crust. Somehow, beneath that, the lamb kontosouvli unthreads like cotton candy – so tender that it could have been kleftiko.
Olympic’s pites also set it apart from your typical Greek grill (both its pies and its souvlaki/gyros pites, aka ‘souvs’). While much of Australia’s Greek restaurant scene sets a high standard when it comes to making (good) handmade pites, like spanakopites, tyropites, etc. – Tim’s yiayia-inspired hortopita being no exception to that – the woodfire oven pita breads deserve a special mention too. Find me more than a handful of souvlatzidika or grillhouses in Greece or Cyprus that make their own pita breads from scratch in house and I’ll hire you. Olympic’s are sort of hybrids, with a puffy, envelope form that opens up like a Cypriot pita and has a rustic, floury crust, but with a fluffiness that somehow also manages to behave like a good Greek pita when wrapped as a souvlaki tylichto or pitogyro.
The pita wraps themselves manage to square the circle of maintaining the form of a traditional Greek pita while having their own unique trademark touch, like all good traditional souvlatzidika (each traditionally serving their own unique homemade takes on the typical condiments [e.g. red salsa in Athens], for example). Pickles are the Olympic Meats signature touch, and you also get to try Tim’s own saltsa in the kebab and lamb souvlaki pites.
Occasionally, you’ll also find Olympic championing undersung Greek grill specials on its rotating menu, like kokoretsi, kefalakia, frigadeli and glykadia (sweetbreads; which seem to be relatively popular in Australia in general). Tim also occasionally makes Peloponnesian siglino (aka pasto) and tsigerosarmades. Understandably, I have no room for dessert, but couldn’t possibly say no to Tim’s ekmek kataifi dessert – easily one of the best I’ve had.
In order for Greek cuisine to survive: to be discovered and documented for what it is, to be recreated and exported with its very soul intact, and presented in an unapologetically honest and non-pretentious light that puts the indispensable building blocks front-and-centre, we need people like Tim – all over the world.
📍Olympic Meats, 12 Dudley St, Marrickville NSW 2204, Australia
https://www.olympicmeats.shop/
Alpha Dining, CBD: Greek classics under Sydney’s Hellenic Club
It’s just as well that, on a wide street in the heart of Sydney’s central business district, directly opposite the Galanolefki that marks the Greek Consulate General building, you find an elegant but welcoming Greek restaurant that well and truly represents Greek cuisine for what it is. Alpha is easily one of Sydney’s classiest yet humble Greek spots, not just for its genuinely well-executed, authentic, smart-looking take on Greek cuisine, but also as somewhat of a hub for the Greek community, with its events and with Sydney’s Hellenic Club just upstairs.
Alpha is great-tasting Greek food with great ingredients, dressed up nicely. There might be an olive tree on the bar, ancient Greek-inspired neoclassical busts and an ancient Greek-inscribed feature wall in a spacious, elegant dining room, but the atmosphere is humble. Greek Australian hospitality veteran Con Dedes is in the house with his son Stavros, both darting between a reception in the Hellenic Club upstairs and meetings that they are taking in the restaurant. Somehow, they manage to find time to greet me and Dean of Yitonia with a warm welcome (without us having ever met). That type of genuine hospitality and its basics is a dying art – a simple smile and warm welcome and an interest in your patrons, without the pretence or bravado. Rarely, in my experience, is that followed by a bad meal. Con even finds 5 minutes to sit down with us, and it’s not hard to see how he and Kerrie have built their restaurant empire Dedes Waterfront Group.
That ethos clearly trickles down: the service is impeccable and our waiter, Peter, makes you feel as home as you possibly can in a smart-looking restaurant. Con also tells us that the Italian serving our mains with great enthusiasm is actually executive chef Riccardo Pazzona (previously head chef at The Apollo). Making Greek food this well as an Italian is no mean feat, but Riccardo’s experience and Mediterranean background are no-doubt a large part of the quality here. He swiftly heads back behind the wide pass that backs the dining room and showcases much of the kitchen, where a rare, calm collectedness and positivity filters out into the whole restaurant. It’s not the only place in Australia where I’m impressed to turn up and find owners that are actually in their restaurant, take the time to come and see you, and chefs that switch between kitchen and front of house like it’s nothing.
And the food reflects that. A good, authentic Greek menu, presented elegantly – but not pretentiously. We get to try kavourmas, which you don’t see too often on Greek restaurant menus. Kavourmas most typically refers to cuts of pork, slow-cooked/confit and preserved in its fat. Alpha’s is thinly sliced like ham and served with pickles and a beautiful, housemade tsoureki. A really enjoyable and balanced start that continues that way, with a good prawn saganaki (actually served in the saganaki too) and good lahanodolmades with the classic avgolemono blanket on top. A very enjoyable chargrilled octopus salad has delicious, al dente samphire woven through it and juicy, cooked cherry tomatoes. For the mains: a juicy, smokey charcoal baked chicken dish and, finally, a slow-roasted spiced lamb shoulder that just about gets the balance of spices right and melts apart. The spices on the lamb almost mimic ras el hanout, but at the same time it doesnt’ depart too far from flavours and ingredients that are familiar to Greek cuisine.
Hospitality is a holistic experience; the people and the experience matter just as much as the food. Alpha and its people are elegant, composed and classy and, above all, genuine. As sophisticated and modern as everything looks, the focus is Greek dishes as we know them, complete with genuinely good cooking that you enjoy. And that’s what matters.
📍Alpha Dining, 238 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
https://dedesgroup.com.au/venues/alpha-dining/
Corinthian Rotisserie Restaurant, Marrickville: old-school no-nonsense Greek grill and eatery
Corinthian is your classic Greek grill, and a Sydney institution. It has an incredible aura about it before you even step inside. You get that grounding, humbling sense of anticipation and adrenaline – ok, butterflies in your stomach – before you even set foot in Corinthian. A buzz from within that can’t possibly contain itself finds you outside and, suddenly, the backlit Hellenic signage that bellows ‘ΨΗΣΤΑΡΙΑ’ glares as the hustle and bustle of the street mutes itself and time and space stop still. For a moment. This moment. Corinthian Rotisserie in Marrickville, 8pm on a Friday night.
You walk into a what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude, no pretence. A counter packed with balancing tapsia of home-cooked classics and the patient product of souvles spinning. Kefalakia – lamb heads – that don’t need to hide. And a respectfully boisterous dining room that is absolutely packed, adorned with a broad mural of Corinth’s Isthmus and 2004 European Championship memorabilia opposite. The waiters will seat and serve you if they can and, if they can, they’ll treat you well. They’re busy, but we’re nice to them and wait our turn, and so they treat us well.
Highlights: Real tzatziki, a delicious, crispy, tender psito arni (slow cooked lamb) that absolutely melts and is full of flavour, a big hearty, imposing slice of pastitsio that fills your heart, and a bold, rustic slice of flakey spanakopita that tastes great. This is it. Back for more souvles and the kefalakia asap – if any Sydney parees want to join and claim the eyeball and brain.
📍Corinthian Rotisserie Restaurant, 283 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204, Australia
https://www.instagram.com/corinthian_greekrotisserie
Clarence and V, CBD: Greek plates that feel like a grandmotherly hug
Although it doesn’t force a Greek label and includes a couple of non-Greek (mainly Italian) touches on a mainly-Greek menu, Stella Roditis’ cooking at Clarence and V in Sydney's CBD includes some of the best Greek plates I ate in Australia: real, honest, hearty and heartwarming, classy-but-motherly cooking with a stylish, minimalist edge – and without any faff or pretentiousness. The focus here is the food and good ingredients, and the equally stylish, minimalist dining room helps reinforce that, with humility and class.
Head honcho Vito, having spent a lot of time in London, speaks knowledgeably about London’s restaurant scene, and his favourites are genuinely some of our best restaurants (Smoking Goat comes up, where Greek chef Nick Molyviatis played a pivotal role, and has since co-launched a Greek & Cypriot taverna in Covent Garden, which you can read about here). Like the looped film that’s projected on the wall alongside the bar, Vito’s modern art collection lines the walls and adds a lo-fi dimension to the “canteen”. With its large glass panels and hip, understated vibe, Clarence is also somehow reminiscent of Athens (namely Exarcheia’s Pharaoh, Pagrati’s Akra and Psyrri’s LS&SIA), something which is consistent with Stella’s sensitively authentic Greek cooking.
Stella shows that Greek dishes – as they are, without the need for overcomplications or confusion – can be refined and classy. It just needs care and attention to detail. In other words, meraki. And Clarence pleases stomach and soul alike for the very reason that Stella’s food has all that: a very good yellow split-pea dip (aka fava); a lively, vibrant tomato-cucumber salad; fresh, whole sardines with chilli, garlic and chopped olives; a very Greek serving of olive oil-based sausage and bean stew; whole beetroots that are full of flavour; and a well-cooked, melting kleftiko dish with lamb ribs and caramel-soft peppers, onions and subtly-fragrant rosemary potatoes. You smell Stella’s handmade bougatsa long before it reaches your table, and it rubs shoulders with the best ones in Thessaloniki. And if you get to try the thinly sliced porchetta to begin with, you’ll be as glad as I am that Clarence doesn’t restrict itself to a Greek label. On the other hand, you can tell you’re eating good food when it’s a well-executed combination of fresh ingredients that burst with flavour, and you feel as though they are nourishing you as you eat them – that is as Greek as food can get.
Calling yellow split-pea dip ‘fava’ doesn’t make it Greek, making it authentically and making it well with good, tasty, nutritious, organic ingredients does. Clarence and V, without even making a sound about it, is more Greek than most Greek restaurants I’ve been to outside of Greece, let alone those who use the Greek label while Greek dishes comprise a minority of their menu, and while taking the very aforementioned fundamental essence out of it. The incredible thing about Australia is that you can find one of the most noble examples of what Greek food really is and can be in a restaurant that doesn’t even feel the need to call itself Greek or use marketing buzzwords to attract fickle diners. And that’s another thing that makes Clarence so classy. Good people, good wine, good food, good atmosphere. Shoutout to Tim of Olympic Meats for taking me here.
📍 Clarence and V, 2/191 Clarence St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
https://www.instagram.com/clarenceandv
Homer Rogue Taverna, Cronulla: an Athens-inspired neotaverna with style
Brothers Harry and Mario are the warm and welcoming characters behind this new stylish “rogue taverna” in coastal Cronulla. Harry’s design background comes through in the relaxed, subtly graffitied industrial interior that brings Exarcheia to shark waters, but with a clean Australian meticulousness about it.
There are sparks of originality and meraki at Homer that inspire. Most impressive is the emphasis on handmade, homemade cooking, with Kirri Metaxotos, the master of the housemade pites in the kitchen, and an enviable woodfire oven that head chef Kirrie Mouat slides pites into between simultaneously navigating the grill and the pass. It’s again worth emphasising that Homer is one of the handful of Greek restaurants on earth that I have found making its own pita breads in house, and you get to start off with the model sesame-studded koulouri Thessalonikis, in our case alongside some tyrokafteri. Other unforgettable highlights are the tomato powder-carressed Symi-style shrimps, which are beautifully, moreishly crispy and do indeed successfully mimic those of a good seaside fish taverna in Greece. Likewise, the dolmadakia that are dressed in avgolemono are an easy, unembellished, traditional win.
There is also some playfulness, with some talk of a “Greek aftershave” that refers to a garlicky-herby dressing on the enjoyable octopus ‘souvlaki’ (‘souvlaki’, because it’s cooked and served skewered). I don’t want to have to share the manouri saganaki, topped with hot honey and kataifi, with my company for the meal, Krystal of The Greek Providore, because it’s so good. It’s harder to steal Krystal’s share of the rooster stifado “cigar” dish, though, which comes in two cigars and is absolutely delicious, the use of stifado as a filling in a crispy case a success. The souvla is indeed cooked on a large skewer, but is reimagined as sous vide pork belly that is then grilled to order. Because of the fat content, pork belly is always delicious slow-grilled on a rotisserie skewer that retains the moisture, as the fat slowly renders, melts, crisps up and bastes the meat as it spins. The sous vide approach breaks down the fat differently and gives it more of a gelatinous result, but many will love how effortlessly Homer’s souvla melts under the slightest of pressure from your fork.
A bakaliaros skordalia pita, with some pickles and dill was an inevitable intersectional experiment at a modern Greek taverna somewhere in the world, of a traditional Greek dish in tylichto form. This one is quite well-executed but, having tried this myself at home last year, I don’t think battered cod with a potatoey garlic puree, wrapped in pita bread is the best combination of flavours or textures – the pita adds a slight sweetness and the batter and potato getting tangled up with the dough texture wise. At the same time, I’m glad that this is on the menu at Homer, as an example of creativity that works with Greek dishes and flavours. I wouldn’t change that dish, personal feelings about it (mostly based on my own attempt of it) aside, especially given that Homer’s homemade pita breads work a lot better with it than your typical fluffy Greek pita.
My one reservation: the only real cliché I would erase here would be the incorporation of the foreign flatbread craze, borrowed from Agora’s abhorrently bastardised portrayal of Greek cuisine in London. In Greece we have enough breads and pites to showcase, which have the ability to wow, while encapsulating the very core essence of our cuisine – a cuisine that, in a nutshell, is delicious food born out of a poverty that is compensated by the riches of land and sea. We are killing our cuisine every time we neglect all of that for random trends, in this case London’s flatbread craze. But, again, at least Homer’s flatbreads make use of Greek ingredients and Greek flavours, and there really is substance and a good execution behind a lot of the ‘trendy’ ideas, which only really form a part of the menu.
Another real showstopper is the beautiful, creamy, homemade galaktoboureko, with fragrantly syrupy, crunchy-light filo pastry – easily one of the best galaktoboureka I’ve had, and not far off my favourite of Greece’s patisseries included (Galifianakis, Kosmikon, etc.). After almost kissing Harry and Mario because of the galaktoboureko, we head to Homer’s sister café-deli around the corner, Ham. I grab a good freddo espresso and head off to the beach inspired by the way in which these brothers are representing our cuisine with style but also honesty, and while giving it their own informed, original signature touch.
📍Homer Rogue Taverna, 3/3 Surf Rd, Cronulla NSW 2230, Australia
https://www.homerroguetaverna.com.au/
Grk Meze Grill, Ramsgate Beach: a real Greek neighbourhood restaurant and grill
Shoutout to Angelique, President of the Cretan Youth Association of Sydney for recommending Grk. Although it wasn’t initially on my radar, Grk ended up being one of the most authentic and fulfilling Greek spots I visited in Sydney. The tylichta (pitogyra/souvlakia/pita wraps) are spot on and very well-wrapped (a detail which isn’t always a guarantee, even at some very good souvlatzidika). Delicious, smokey, perfectly-seasoned, sliced kontosouvli, with the tomato, onion, a good tzatziki and a dash of paprika. As authentic as it gets, and very well executed. Easily one of the best tylichta I had in Australia alongside Olympic in Marrickville, Karvouna in Melbourne’s Black Rock and Ermou in Richmond.
Another surprise is the bekri mezes: a lesser-known meraklidiko Greek meze of spicy pork, stewed with tomato sauce and some peppers (similar to spetsofai, which is with loukanika – for which you can follow my recipe here). Spicy, saucy, and heartwarming. At Grk it’s – actually very accurately – translated as “drunken pork” (μπεκρή = drunk), which I thought was a genius way of authentically communicating real Greek food to a wider audience, and this is again another spot in Australia that does a particularly good job of that.
📍Grk Meze Grill, 2/203-207 Ramsgate Rd, Ramsgate NSW 2217, Australia
https://www.grksouvlaki.com.au/
Yia Mas Greek Taverna, St Peters: mouth-watering souvles and live music
Friends Harry & Dennis, originally from Nafpaktos and Zakynthos respectively, are the duo behind this popular traditional taverna in Sydney. Billy ο ξάδερφος του Κωνσταντίνου and I arrive on a Friday night to a fully-booked sitting and the characteristically jolly, high end-heavy, reverby, archetypical Australian bouzouki sound (the bouzouki sounds happier in Australia for some reason). As we watch huge trays of loukoumades flow out of the kitchen to celebrate special occasion after special occasion, we’re relieved to find out that we’ve just about made it in time to try some souvles. And thank God.
Dennis slices a couple of the remaining pieces of glistening kontosouvli from the tower of spinning souvles and sprinkles them with oregano. You don’t need a knife, your fork slides right through the pork, which has a sensible, balanced flavour that shows these guys know what they’re doing when it comes to souvles. No overpowering marinades, and the right amount of salt. Served the Greek way, with some sliced red onion that has chopped parsley running through it, a squeeze of lemon, plus a good Greek salad on the side.
Despite having a ram-packed restaurant, Dennis finds the time to come and sit with us, again without us ever having met. That sums up Australia’s Greek community, and that sums up Yia Mas, which, however you wish to read the name (για μας or γειά μας), lives up to its meaning.
📍Yia Mas Greek Taverna, 1/1-5 Princes Hwy, St Peters NSW 2044, Australia
https://www.yiamas.com.au/
Akti, Woolloomooloo: classy Greek plates on the akti
Akti, meaning coast, which is (presumably) named after its location – overlooking a row of swaying boats along Woolloomooloo’s Finger Wharf – is another authentically refined take on Greek food by Ntinos Fotinakis.
Everything is fresh and inventive, yet still feels authentic on an undeniably Greek menu, from the tuna with pickled cucumber and tahini mayonnaise, the sliced octopus with black garlic, roasted aubergine and pickled chilli, to the mousakas croquettes, which are a delight: small slices of real, layered mousakas, breaded and fried. A real standout is the prasopita (leek pie), perfectly seasoned, silky greens that still have a liveliness about them, in the perfect crispy filo. Other dishes that assume a more traditional form, like the lahanodolmades and saganaki cheese that we try, are all well-executed and tasty, just as are the dips that come with a brilliant, fluffy handmade pita bread.
If I have to find a fault, I don’t know if the pork kalamaki (souvlaki) needs to be as complicated as it is – it’s more like what some Greek tavernes would often call kontosouvli in some cases (as a large, chunky souvlaki), but is covered in sauce with garlic and roasted pepper, which can be a little distracting when you expect a good taste of charcoal-grilled pork. Overall, Akti is a classy, respectable modern take on Greek food in a beautiful setting where you could easily see out an entire afternoon, with a menu that you can’t deny is indeed Greek and good.
📍Akti, 6 Cowper Wharf Roadway, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011, Australia
https://srghospitality.com.au/venue/akti/
Etheus, Bondi: a successful contemporary take on Greek & Cypriot dishes by the beach
Admittedly, I always have reservations about more refined, luxury takes on Greek cuisine, and I do fear that a spot on Bondi beach would be most likely of all in this list to fall into the ‘offensive’ category. But the standard of Australia’s (Greek) restaurant scene, is that you can turn up to a stylish, contemporary dining room, overlooking Bondi Beach, and actually get good Greek food, executed well and authentically. It’s inoffensive and tastes good(!)
Some Cypriot elements feature on the menu – namely, the tahini dip, halloumi, and sheftalies – and Cyprus should be credited, either in the descriptions of those dishes, or somewhere in the restaurants’ brand messaging. The sheftalies come sliced in half and served with yoghurt. It’s not an authentically Cypriot way of serving sheftalies, and I don’t see why the sheftalies need to be sliced, but I’m not offended by the yoghurt. Plus, they are actually quite good (and, again, authentic).
You get a good housemade, chunky, strifti spanakopita, kotopites that come in rolls (somewhat like the rooster stifado rolls at Homer), really tasty hilopites, a delicious fancy tyrokafteri topped with a surprisingly successful spin of roasted fennel and some seeds, and a Greek salad with some of the best vegetables I tried in Australia. A nice touch is the zucchini flower and ricotta that tops the hilopites, although one of the many Greek alternatives to ricotta could be used here (e.g. xigalo, anthotyro, galomyzithra or any other galotyri).
Overall, it isn’t just a surprisingly good representation of Greek cuisine relative to its location, but Etheus (which, apparently, is short for Prometheus, who gave us fire) is actually a good representation of some lesser-celebrated Greek dishes. It’s original, with its own characteristic embellishments and twists, which complement and work with the fundamentals of the dishes, rather than take the Greekness out of them, and I think that’s something worth congratulating.
📍Etheus, Bondi Pavilion, Shop 4 Queen Elizabeth Dr, Bondi Beach NSW 2026, Australia
https://www.etheus.sydney/
Steki Taverna, Enmore: a classic Greek taverna with live music
Although many come here to eat, I ought to disclaim that we arrive as the party’s getting started. Steki is Sydney’s classic live music taverna where, by the end of the meal, the entire restaurant is the dance floor.
Although we don’t sit down enough in order to eat anything, Steki is worth it for a good Greek night out: a first-in-class band, a bouzouksi with lightning-quick chops, waitresses that join the party, trays full of shots that turn into the percussion section, and the feeling that there isn’t a single worry on planet earth anymore. No one is sitting down, parees coalesce on the dancefloor and spill out onto the street outside. The kind of night-out that feels like a wedding in 2006. Timeless, and a million miles away from everything (I haven’t experienced this atmosphere anywhere in Europe for a few years). Just let me know what the food is like if you go.
📍Steki Taverna, 149 Enmore Rd, Enmore NSW 2042, Australia
https://www.stekitaverna.com/
Born to Bake Patisserie Cafe, Eastlakes: Sydney’s favourite Greek bakery
Born to Bake is possibly Sydney’s most popular Greek bakery/patisserie and a few people told me to come here. The Yitonia boys and I stop by just before our drive back to Melbourne for a freddo espresso and a koulouri and, with Kathara Deftera and Lent approaching, there are posters urging customers to place their orders for homemade lagána bread. You know you’re in a Greek bakery when you see something like that.
📍Born to Bake Patisserie Cafe, Unit 1/279 Gardeners Rd, Eastlakes NSW 2018, Australia
https://www.instagram.com/borntobakegreek
Gyradiko, Bexley: an authentically Greek gyradiko
Gyradiko is the single gyradiko in Sydney I found that most looks like the typical or average gyradiko as you’d find it in Greece – a bit like Ermou in Melbourne. It’s not your premium gyros with the best ingredients, but it’s good at what it is and is an accurate transposition of what modern gyradika and their menus normally look like in Greece. Likewise, the pitogyro is done well and authentically, it just doesn’t taste quite as good as some of the other spots in Australia. I honestly think that the idiosyncratically Australian quirk of cooking house-marinaded, house-skewered gyros (horizontally) over charcoal is a massive benefit, especially while lots of gyradika in Greece are beginning to skip those processes and charcoal-cooked gyros is increasingly rare to find. That’s a commentary on Australia’s Greek street food scene rather than a critique of this spot, though. Gyradiko cooks its gyros on the more conventional vertical broiler and does a good job of it.
📍Gyradiko, 307 Forest Rd, Bexley NSW 2207, Australia
https://gyradiko.com.au/
Hellenic Patisserie, Marrickville: a real local Greek bakery
Hellenic is another well-respected bakery/patisserie in the Greek community, and sits in Marrickville, a neighbourhood with a strong Greek history. After getting on with the staff and discovering I share a hometown with one of them, I grab a spanakopita for the road, which, despite having a good layer of handmade filo around it, is juicy enough inside for me to stain my white t-shirt that I’m wearing. In any case, worth it.
📍Hellenic Patisserie, 371 Illawarra Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204, Australia
https://www.hellenicpatisserie.com.au/
Olympus, Red Fern & The Apollo, Potts Point: Sydney’s most popular modern Greek restaurants
Olympus and The Apollo are arguably two of the most popular and en vogue Greek restaurants in not just Sydney, but all of Australia, at the time of writing. Both are sleek, trendy, and popular amongst millennials and Gen Zers in particular, perhaps for the fashionable, industrial look that references Athenian neotavernes, and menus that feature Greek dishes and cooking, but with some playful characteristics that you can tell do come from a place of respect and passion for Greek cuisine.
Although there are some performative touches that do warn of a prioritisation of style over substance at times, and mark a slight departure from the ‘Greekness’ of certain dishes, both Olympus and The Apollo pass the very simple first test (which you can’t take as a given anymore) of actually having menus of Greek food. The menus of the two restaurants largely overlap, but are slightly different, as I explain below. Olympus feels slightly more staged, largely because of the heavy influencer presence and the imposing tree.
I’m a big advocate of handmade pites (spanakopita etc) and will continue to propose that we support anybody making pites, including the phyllo, from scratch. Olympus and The Apollo score in this regard. There just needs to be a recalibration of the greens to achieve a more balanced, rather than a predominantly bitter, flavour. And it doesn’t need the wedge of lemon on top. It’s not quite your typical phyllo either (in its many typical forms), but it’s a handmade spanakopita that deserves praise. I’m also a big fan of The Apollo Restaurant Group’s Development Chef Oscar Solomon’s work, and his informed, well-researched approach to recreating Greek classics in Australia. It’s largely thanks to him that you find authentic menus at The Apollo and Olympus.
As a Greek, I’m always thrilled when I see avgolemono on the menu – our homely egg-lemon-emulsion-based soup that grows on every Greek as they grow up, always greets them after a long journey home and is the medicine for any and every cold and illness. The avgolemono is decent, but is missing a fair bit of rice. Herbs and chilli accompany a “How to avgolemono” card, which recognises avgolemono as a cross-generational, medicinal, motherly ritual. Adding oregano and chilli flakes to avgolemono soup isn’t incredibly common, albeit not unheard of, but the suggestion of adding lemon in this case is something we can all recognise.
There is also the promise of an “avgolemono pie” at The Apollo, which invokes hopes of that same silky egg-lemon emulsion, perhaps as a cheesecake? Or perhaps as a kind of reimagined lemon meringue pie. What you get ultimately does indeed end up just being a deconstructed lemon meringue pie. I guess a kind of deconstructed of a deconstruction of an avgolemono pie. Or just a deconstructed lemon meringue pie. That said, of the two restaurants, the dishes at The Apollo are somewhat more enjoyable on the nights that we visit, with the papoutsaki (mousakas), beetroot, Aegean-esque horta, and oven baked snapper which wears a vine leaf bikini – actually a very Greek touch and an easy win.
On the other hand, you feel as though Olympus is, at times, trying a bit too hard: perhaps the taramosalata would be more balanced without the orange zest, the octopus has an unpleasantly unbalanced taste, and the kolokithakia don’t necessarily need to be covered in myzithra even if they’re among the better dishes we try (fried courgettes are a classic taverna dish that most commonly come with tzatziki or a yoghurt dip). The païdakia would definitely be more enjoyable grilled with nothing but some salt – instead they come swimming in a sharp jus. Again, kokoretsi is offal wrapped in caul fat and intestines, cooked on the souvla – which is exactly what you should expect when you read kokoretsi on a menu and order it. This one comes as a spring roll-style pastry with a kind of shredded offal filling. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not what you order, and I can’t see why that information can’t be disclosed to diners from the moment they order a dish.
I think if we are going to subtly play with Greek dishes, we have to make sure it is indeed well-executed and that the dish retains its overall balance. I’ve written about successful attempts at that, which are well-executed, balanced, but remain rooted in the essence of Greek cuisine and put in the homework to showcase undersung Greek ingredients and Greek dishes (namely Aegli in Melbourne). Good Greek food doesn’t leave you with a sharpness in your mouth, but it’s something which seems to have become a trend in trendy, modern Greek restaurants in the diaspora (I think of frustrating places like Oma, Meraki, and Lagana in London). But I’m nit-picking and simply relaying to you what I see and think while I eat, in the hope that we do honestly do succeed in preserving what Greek cuisine really is for future generations, and documenting and talking about it are central to that.
However, broader context considered, Olympus and The Apollo are indeed fair portrayals of Greek food. While, in my hometown of London, a couple of the restaurants that the market hypes the most and considers ‘Greek-inspired’ barely even feature many Greek-inspired elements, it’s refreshing to find Sydney’s most talked about Greek spots at least actually trying to represent Greek cuisine. And it’s incredibly concerning to see those London projects – because of London’s status and the aggressive and misleading manner in which those restaurants market themselves on social media – have an impact on Greek restaurant menus as far as Australia (one example being Oma/Agora’s bizarre celebration of non-Greek breads and flatbreads, itself born out of a flatbread craze in London, having inspired those at Homer as mentioned above.)
Olympus and The Apollo are on that ship of a widely popular, trendy take on Greek cuisine, but manage to steer it away from foreign ports and back towards Greece as we know and experience in this universe and planet that we all live on (presumably). Much like Homer in Cronulla. We just need to make sure that, on that voyage, we are retaining the real essence, balance, and simplicity of Greek cuisine, or otherwise reimagining it in a way that is in tandem with its fundamentals, its agricultural roots, and its balanced nature, as well as its ingredients and its dishes.
📍Olympus Dining, Wunderlich Lane, 2 Baptist St, Redfern NSW 2016, Australia
https://olympusdining.com.au/
📍The Apollo, 44 Macleay St, Potts Point NSW 2011, Australia
https://olympusdining.com.au/
Still need to check it out
As promised, here are the places I didn’t manage to go this time round, which I’ll need to go to before I can give you a realistic picture as to the quality. Or perhaps someone on the ground who’s still reading can help us out…
Ammos
Ela Ela
Stix
Meet the Greek
Tsipouro Taverna
Little Kalymnos
Janus Bar
Honey & Walnut
Kafeini
You think I missed something? Want to help me fill in the gaps?
Let me know alex@souvlakination.com
p.s. if you’ve read this far, email me with the subject ‘GOTCHA MALAKA’ and, if you’re the first person, I’ll reply to send you a free Souvlakination t-shirt, wherever in the world you are.