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Kouzina

John Lethlean and Reviewer

Kouzina.
Kouzina.Supplied

Greek

Score: 12.5/20

Greek food? The traditional stuff. Sorry, I find it hard to get even faintly excited about most of it. I went there last year and good meals were the exception. Great yoghurt, lots of sheep, and not-so-good chips with everything. Great people, but when it comes to food they're not, well, Italian enough.

Kouzina is a Greek restaurant pitching itself like an Olympic discus at the high end. Creative, contemporary Greek food is the promise. The owner/chef has a place at Knox - Mykonos - with a working windmill in the dining room and large-screen monitors for modern music videos, says the website. Earlier this year, he took over what was Mecca, at Southgate: a cracking site with balcony seating overlooking the city and access to the whole arts precinct.

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This is big-rent territory for a restaurateur, a lot of Greek salads. Except, Kouzina doesn't do Greek salads.

They do - wait for it - "brunoise of Greek salad on rocket" for $8. Now, I have no problem with modern interpretations of any traditional cuisine and, since the topic's ugly head has already raised itself by default, I can't deny having been pretty impressed by what George Calombaris has done at The Press Club. And I like rocket when it's not all supermarket-stalky.

But using a French cookery term incorrectly to describe diced Greek salad vegetables and fetta on a peppery leaf, doused in a quantity of unpleasant-smelling dried herb, well, I'd call it trying just a little too hard, wouldn't you? And personally I found it inedible. Talk about ruining one of the world's great salads.

Kouzina's website says: "After opening the succesful (sic) and popular Mykonos Cafe Restaurant in Knox Ozone, Theo (Kostoglou) and his wife Sharelle decided to target the city and introduce a more innovative and creative style to enhance what is offered at Mykonos."

So Kouzina, despite some really appalling Greek adult pop music, is not a place for hearty, traditional peasant foods at peasant prices. While you can certainly get dips and spanakopita and moussaka, most of the food has considerably greater pretensions, coming out of the kitchen styled up with smears and spots and sprinkles on the plates, and sometimes some rather smart crockery. A bit the French Laundry goes Hellenic. Naturally, the prices are adjusted accordingly.

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But I couldn't help feeling Kouzina was a suburban restaurant gone walkabout. It's a bland space; the sparkling wine (from a rather handy little wine list) had a strawberry on the rim, which I haven't seen for a while in a restaurant.

One waiter was almost certainly a traveller; inexperienced. Another referred to one of our party as "my lady" several times and maintained an almost constant tableside vigil, with an interventionist style of service that was well-intentioned but proved unrelaxing. Paradoxically, we had to ask for water several times, and Kouzina is in a price bracket that creates higher expectations.

Because of the views, most diners choose the balcony, which is enclosed during winter; it left the dining room a rather bleak and barren space this particular evening, a field of white linen and laid tables waiting forlornly for customers. Until, that is, a party of 16 arrived for dessert, which livened things up considerably. I can see why.

The desserts at Kouzina are unquestionably the best dishes: modern, well-conceived and referencing the flavour/ingredients of Greek cuisine nicely. So let's start there.

The kataifi mille feuille ($15) is more a sandwich of the shredded pastry, to be honest; the term, after all, means "thousand leaves" or something similar, and is usually applied to a puffed pastry creation with seemingly a thousand leaves to the pastry. Nevertheless, jammed between the two sheets of kataifi is the most delicious, sesame-flavoured halva ice-cream and two large, rosewater-macerated strawberries. On top are slices of what appears to be candied cumquat, a sweet (but not too sweet) syrup on the plate and a Mr Curly-like informal cone of mastic-flavoured marshmallow, with fruity red spots around it that suggested lots of hard work in the kitchen with the squeeze bottle.

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The flavours and textures showed great empathy with the diner; in other words, it was delicious.

The difficult-to-pronounce-easy-to-eat muhallabiah ($16) was impressive too: a solid, conical tumbler layered first with pomegranate jelly, then an almond milk custard that had a faint texture to it that suggested semolina to me, finished with a crunchy/nutty "salsa" of toasted pine kernels, pomegranate seeds and shredded mint. On the base-plate - for visual effect more than anything - were torn, sugared rose petals. A great finish.

The other food had less impact.

A soup - yiouverlakia avgolemono - lacked lemony flavour to its egg/lemon raft of "foam"; the base stock was dull and the four chicken meatballs sitting in the flash bowl, surrounded by liquid and sprinkled sumac, were bland ($15). Orzo pasta within was very soft. It looked terrific but that's about it.

A big char-grilled octopus tentacle - octapodi sti skara - is sliced and served on a warm salad of small-dice waxy potato, olive and capers, dressed in an olive oil and lemon emulsion, with lemon and sumac on the side ($19). The flesh is much chewier than you'd expect, but it works reasonably well.

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Seared scallops, as usual, get the highly worked presentation treatment: here, each of four is on a plinth of pilaf made with pork, chickpea and bulgur, capped with wilted silverbeet ($21). The plate is dusted with a Greek bottarga - avgotaraho - and there's a linear squirt of orange saffron butter. It all sounds pretty interesting, but the result doesn't seem to reflect the effort to bring lesser-known Greek methods/ingredients to the plate. Seasoning and flavour are subtle, at best.

Ballsier is a spice-crusted baby chicken ($35) hit with the char-grill and served on a platform of green beans and a pan-fried disc of potato; on the plate is a ring of "sumac-fetta sauce" and dots of something darker and saltier. Far more rustic is a tender and pleasant tomato-based braise of veal pieces scented with cinnamon, veal kokkinisto ($32). The meat sits on a nest of ribbon-like egg noodles and is served with shaved, dry myzithra, a Greek whey cheese made usually with a combo of sheep and goat's milk (as is fetta) and similar in this case to dried ricotta.

The main courses sum up the place: some innovation, some tradition. The food's not faulty; it just lacks impressive flavours and textures except, of course, for those desserts.

Kouzina promises plenty but pulls up a little short.

Score: 19: Unacceptable. 1011: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13:Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

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