Vineyard, Greek Taverna
Published by Peter | Filed under Eating & Drinking, General
Continuing with our monthly restaurant visits to celebrate our wedding (January 30, since you ask), the wife and I went to this nice little Greek taverna on Camberwell Grove.
There are a couple of small tables outside and Camberwell Grove is the leafiest street in Camberwell, so I’d imagine on warm evenings this place is even more popular — as it was, we were surprised by how many people were here for a Monday night. The restaurant is decked out with vines across the ceiling — fake, obviously, not like the real ones at Seymour Bros. There are a collection of odd pictures on the walls, but the place feels homely and comfortable.
One drawback was that a waiter come over to us twice before we’d had a chance to take a look at the menu, then after delivering the wine he didn’t come back again for 15 minutes, when we were more than ready to order. But the house white wine was really good, a dry Cypriot that didn’t have a strong flavour and left your mouth nice and fresh.
For our starter my wife ordered vegetarian ‘meatballs’ — I hope that’s not too confusing, I just can’t remember the proper name; Efsthethes, or something — and I had mildly spicy pork and wine sausages — hopefully any readers with a decent knowledge of Greek will correct me when I call them Loukidaca, because that’s similar but not right. I really should have taken a take-away menu when I had the chance.
My wife — ok, her name is Ana, I’ll stop calling her ‘my wife’ — had a Moussaka (I remembered that name) for her main course and I had mixed Kebab. Both came with rice, hers with chips. The Moussaka wasn’t presented well, but was tasty; mine was pretty tasty too. Nothing exceptional, just good food reasonably priced and badly presented.
But apart from the food being average and the service being fairly poor, this is a place we’d go back to — the prices are reasonable and it feels comfortable. It’s not the type of place you’d go for a proper celebration, but a good place to know for early-week eating where you don’t have to get dressed up and you can just feel comfortable.
[…] e their snug bar on a Saturday night. Much as I like the place’s casual atmosphere, The Vineyard isn’t the place for my birthday. However, Rock-8 could be a good option […]
Went there the other night, it was heaving. Great atmosphere, not great food. The grilled meat was okay, but it’s difficult to get that wrong. What annoyed me though was that the salad had Danish feta in it. I found it rather insulting that we are not supposed to tell the difference (even though its the difference between mature cheddar and cheesy string out of a tube) — it’s not difficult to find good Feta in Camberwell (the best is by Dodonis and you can buy it loose from the Olive Branch). The other no-no was the tomato sauce in the chick pea dish that tasted processed. I am actually Greek and I’m afraid that I won’t be recommending this to my mother. Once again, the atmosphere is good, and if you stick to the meat, then this is probably fine. It’d probably recreate most people’s Greek holiday experience too, as the tourist food in Greece is rubbish. My quest to find a half decent Greek restaurant in London continues.