Sleek and chic, but in need of warmth: Zephyr’s main dining room
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)Mum and I held a Greek-themed lunch over the weekend, which proved a shrewd move, and not only for the clouds of ouzo. As food left the kitchen hours behind schedule, we perkily noted that everyone accepted the wait on the grounds of “Greek time” still being a thing. Well, that’s true enough, I thought. Maybe I can start dubbing everything I do “Greek-themed”.
Do those delays matter? Over 17 years of family Corfu trips we have, for instance, occasionally noticed gaps between the mains and puddings that have run on longer than expected — enough time for the wine to run out, say, or for a brand-new waiter to be born, raised and land a job serving at our taverna. Rarely have we cared.
I put this down to the way Greek restaurants — proper ones, with paper napkins, drinks on the house, and plenty of regulars — shape things around the customer. There are plenty in London. They supply what’s needed: dolmades and kleftiko, yes, but also laughter, joy, comfort, commiseration. They tend to be especially generous with this particular menu.
These are restaurants for taking family, and where you feel like family too. And so, meeting a dear pal who lost one of her closest recently, who I also knew — here’s thinking of you, Craig — I thought we’d try Zephyr on Portobello Road. Red prawns, retsina, space to remember. Zephyr, named after the god of westerly wind, will blow a few of those hanging around Gold to its front door. Richard Curtis could cast his next film out of a restaurant like this: we sat beside a beautiful American girl holding hands with an English sort, all floppy hair and self-deprecating grins. Life’s imitation of art is often comical. But it was easy to see their attraction — to the restaurant, I mean.
At night Zephyr is sleek, tanned and glossy. It aches with design, in the green-stemmed wine glasses, the bistro chairs and the near endless array of crockery, which is half Soho House and half your granny’s house. There is tastefully lit art everywhere, including two rectangles of yellow and orange that reminded me of the paint cards cluttering up my sitting room. Is B&Q very vibey these days?
It’ll be a hit. The people behind Zephyr, best known for the Peruvian chain Pachamama, have built somewhere quietly beautiful that’s already abuzz. And often that’s enough.
It will be here for some, I suppose. It’s not that the food isn’t decent — it is, it is perfectly, plainly decent — but the menu is confoundingly inconsistent. Its sections split between spreads, raw, soil, sea, land and desserts, and for a couple, five to seven dishes are suggested. This might cost the table £30 or £200. The direction of travel is not clear and prices are no indication: a £6 bread basket was actually a silver tray as big as the table. Prawns at £21, on the other hand, meant four specimens about the width and length of a front door key and just as easy to lose. Two courgette flowers at £15 looked like a social experiment: one raised by a loving family, the other crippled from years in the basement. That’s a hard plate to divvy up.
After came a happily oil-soaked tomato salad which must have come from the chap who did the bread, given it was the size of the Parthenon. Is this cheffing by committee? Who, for instance, could put so much zing and life into piquant, lemon-soaked seabass carpaccio, but not realise that something billed as a smoked aubergine spread might, even just for a laugh, need some exposure to smoke? Oversight is required.
We did find what we wanted in one dish, the soutzoukakia, all warmly-spiced minced beef and cumin everywhere. And then I thought: there will be those who love the place, who’ll come back for the sea bass and the good looks, who won’t mind that yellow tail served with dashi owes almost nothing to Greece, or that the club music belongs in Ibiza, or that there is a curious coldness in the service. But sleek, chic and souless isn’t for us. So we paid up, left early, stepped into the waning light and called a cab to The Four Lanterns (020 7387 0704) on Cleveland Street. There we drank ouzo, hugged the owners and toasted Craig, and felt a little like family. Zephyr offers a lot, but I don’t think it can do that.
