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Mega-Kalamaras
IT'S STRANGE to think that Greek food was once held in exactly the fashionable, awed esteem now reserved only for Italian cooking at its most robustly rustic. Well, not so strange: for fashionable tastes are governed by nothing more decisive than where the upper-middle classes go on holi- day. Crete and Corfu have been traded up for Tuscany and the over-documented Chi- antishire, via — as you might remember rural France and the joys of la cuisine du terroir. The pieties of the age demand that the appetite for things Italian is not merely cosseted consumer choice, but springs from a concern for Health — low cholesterol, no animal fats and the rest — but at best the various explanations conveniently dove- tail.
The culinary rave of the day is purely style, purely fashion. I can imagine no quicker way to social suicide than by serv- ing up some dinkily elaborate nouvelle cui- sine creation at a dinner party — one can imagine the Bateman cartoon. What we used to like eating is as déclasséas last term's playground craze. I mean, when was the last time you went out for dinner and were given taramasalata?
I was reared on taramasalata, the Sixties being a time when parents fed their chil- dren on taramasalata and dressed them in mirrored boleros from Kids in Gear, and I have kept my taste for it. But nevertheless, I feel the urge to eat Greek food only about once every three years. I had one of those urges last week, and took myself off to the best place to satisfy it.
I'm not exactly sure when Mega-Kalama- ras — so-called to distinguish itself from its offshoot, the smaller, cheaper and unli- censed Micro-Kalamaras at the other end of the mews they both inhabit — was born, but both it and its clientele seem real chil- dren of the Sixties to me. Walk down Inver-
`Oh, that's just great —I buy a whole new outfit and you go ahead and settle out of court.' ness Mews and you'll presume you've taken the wrong turning, but you haven't. The first spot of light is Micro-Kalamaras, the second is what you're looking for. The place is scarcely signposted; the, name is simply and baldly painted above the door, through which you go into a dark but still swinging basement. From the ceiling are suspended basket-weave lamps, sprinkling a warm and hopeful light onto checked gingham tablecloths and walls hung with pictures of men with big moustaches and fishing-boats.
I don't know if saying this is Greek food at its best is saying very much, but never- theless this is Greek food at its best. The taramasalata is as it should be, pale and smoky-toned, not the loud, DayGlo pink gunge sold over deli-counters everywhere. I rather peevishly asked for pitta bread to go with it, instead of the spongy slabs of seed- sprinkled brown and caky white breads lan- guishing in the basket. The waitress made an effort to contain her indignation. `Pitta bread is Cypriot,' she said, 'and we are a Greek restaurant.' However insulting it is to the Greeks, I do miss pitta bread, so pre- fer the skordalia here with salt cod or fried aubergine. The skordalia — a dip of garlic, walnuts, bread, olive oil and vinegar pounded to a knobbly cream — is fiery, a real palate-burner. I'm nearly always keen- er on starters than main courses, so, along with the taramasalata and salt cod with skordalia, I would rather have a bowl of agginares me koukia, small globe arti- chokes with dill-sprinkled broad beans, and maybe a bowl of salty feta and a plate of loukanika, the spicy, spiky-hot sausages, or deep-fried baby squid, sweet and tender. I have never, therefore, made much headway into the main courses, but the arnaki lemonato me spanaki, lamb stewed with lemon and spinach, is a delight.
Pudding is a head-achingly sweet bakla- va, or the bouyatsa, a fragrant and warm custard-tarty concoction. The wine is fierce and unforgiving: I still wince at the memory of a bottle of rosé Boutari. A long and ram- bling dinner for two should not be much over £40. And you should know that the politically correct term for Turkish delight in, as it were, a Greek context, is louk- oumia.
On Easter Saturday, and that's the Greek Orthodox Easter Saturday, a week after ours, Mega-Kalamaris has a special menu, starting with the the Easter Mid- night soup, Mayeritsa, made — if only tra- ditionally — from the intestines of the paschal lamb. The Easter food really is Greek food at its best. The local Greeks come here straight from the church in Moscow Road, in a candle-bearing proces- sion at midnight, but you can book to eat at a more usual hour.
Mega-Kalamaras, 76-78 Inverness Mews, W2; tel 071 727 9122/25t54
Nigella Lawson
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