SA Weekend restaurant review — Agapi, King William Rd Hyde Park

A new Greek restaurant in the southern suburbs shows that even the simplest of foods can become something special, writes Simon Wilkinson.

Diners outside at Agapi Greek restaurant on King William Rd at Hyde Park.

There are sausages and there are sausages. All have their place.

At one end of the scale are the bangers that sizzle in their own spitting fats on the flat plate barbecue at Bunnings and are transformed by some mystical alchemy when combined with blackened onions, white bread and tomato sauce.

Sheftalies don’t need any such help. Calling this specialty from Cyprus a sausage is like calling Krug Grande Cuvee a bottle of fizz.

Coarsely ground pork mince is mixed with dried mint and spices led by cinnamon, shaped into stout little torpedoes and wrapped in a web of caul fat that melts away on the grill. Bouncy, aromatic and charred on their rough edges, they need nothing more than a squeeze of fresh lemon to ignite the primal response that barbecued meat has been getting since Ugg first grilled a mammoth steak.

The Greeks are masters of this style of cooking, largely because they don’t try to complicate things, a discipline that Hyde Park restaurant Agapi has learnt well.

Haloumi saganaki at Agapi Greek in King William Rd, Hyde Park

Not that Agapi looks particularly Greek. In fact, it looks almost exactly like the Japanese restaurant Ichitaro that was the previous tenant in this site, squeezed between two other eateries, at the livelier end of King William Road.

The interior styling – black walls crisscrossed by rugged sisal ropes like oversized string art – is not easily forgotten and the only obvious additions are a few Mediterranean bits and pieces filling the shelves.

Owner/chef Umesh Dhanushka, who opened Agapi a year and a half ago, has form with this type of cooking. He previously ran Meraki, in North Adelaide, before opening the less clearly defined Petrichor in Rundle St.

Umesh is Sri Lankan, not Greek, but trained for six months in the city of Thessaloniki and was hooked. His signature dish, one that he has taken to each of the ventures above, is a slowly spit roasted lamb shoulder with accompaniments to share. They’ve ordered it at the next table and, having watched the supernatural ease with which the bones are extracted by a gentle tug from a pair of tongs, I’m sure it’s still worth having, even at $85.

Other than the meat and seafood platters, the remaining menu is much more modestly priced, growing in serving size from smaller meze to meyala (or mains).

Grilled octopus, beetroot and skordalia from Agapi.

A saucer-sized splat of saganaki-style haloumi is crisp and golden at the base and a molten ooze on top. It has all the wicked indulgence of those cheesy bits that leak from a toasted sandwich, moderated just a little by a green “peasant salsa” containing plenty of dill and fresh lemon.

Octopus tentacle is braised briefly with red wine, bay leaves and other aromatics, before its last dance on the grill. Chunky lengths of pearly flesh rimmed by charred suckers and skinnier pieces that have cooked through are hidden beneath a crown of fresh greenery. Beneath them the magenta dye from wedges of pickled beetroot is starting to leach into a bed of potato skordalia that, for once, doesn’t contain crazy quantities of garlic.

Grilled quail from Agapi at Hyde Park.

Bougasta (custard-filled pastries) at Agapi.

Beetroot features again, this time with orange, in a salad that bolsters portions of grilled quail with plenty of succulent meat where it counts.

Having ordered “moussaka” we didn’t expect to be served the vegetarian version but the summery, ratatouille-style combination of capsicum, zucchini and slices of tender eggplant are just fine under a puffy dome of bechamel, sprinkled with nutmeg and finished under the grill.

And a Cypriot salad of bulgur wheat, lentils, slivered almonds, pomegranate and raisins makes a more substantial side than the usual Greek combo of tomato, cucumber and feta, though you could easily have both.

To finish, the dessert known as “bougatsa” is reinterpreted as a filo cigar filled with soft custard and plonked in a tumbler holding a blob of whipped cream. Cue eye-rolling from the traditionalists but the shattering of super-fresh pastry layers and smoothest of custards make this like eating the vanilla slice of your dreams without the mess.

Sausages. Roast lamb. Vanilla slice. Dress them up, give them different names, add herbs, spices or even tomato sauce, and the enjoyment is still there. Still, I’d take dinner at Agapi over the queue at Bunnings any day.