Restaurant review: Nostimo at The Greek Club a culinary gem

A new Brisbane restaurant with a traditional feel looks set to satisfy those yearnings for a European escape with a feast of intriguing flavours.

Nostimo restaurant at The Greek Club. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

Two of my best friends were married in the Greek Orthodox Church of St George.

The reception, naturally, was at The Greek Club.

Not too many years later I was a regular there for the boxing (oddly enough the Greek Club and the finest of sports made a great match). Fond memories for sure, but it all happened decades ago.

I returned this week to visit Nostimo, a newish restaurant attached to the Greek Club and it’s hard, in both a physical and philosophical sense, to see any resemblance between now and then.

The outlook is Musgrave Park rather than the Aegean Sea (tiny difference), but the decor has a healthy dose of Grecian in its mix — whitewash, whitewash, whitewash, a splash of blue and some plain timber. Bright, clean, uplifting.

Nostimo restaurant at The Greek Club, South Brisbane. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

And it has a massive deck which, on a summer’s day, is a great place to sit thanks to a breeze that rolls in and keeps things cool.

I can picture a long Sunday lunch with the once-were-newlyweds.

It isn’t busy on our visit, so how the service rolls on a Saturday night is beyond my ken, but it patters along exceedingly smoothly on a Tuesday lunch.

Plenty of Greek drinks are offered — a range of ouzo and tsipouro, Greek beers and great array of Greek wines, plus a couple of cocktails. I’m in a beer mood so — being an adventurous chap — I try one from Thessaloniki and another from Macedonia.

Nostimo has an intriguing, colourful menu that straddles tradition and imagination very, very cleverly. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

I’ve tasted better but there’s that mitigating, emotive factor of dining (or drinking) like a local. I’m happy.

There’s a new menu in play and, like the previous, it is focused on Greece. But amid the traditional is some stuff that has been tinkered with.

Like, for example, an almost-savoury dish of pork belly baklava ($25, nicely kooky); kingfish tartare ($24, shallots, ouzo jelly, eggplant puree, tomato crisps); chargrilled octopus, pickled vegetables, split-pea puree ($24).

Interpretations, I guess, of the classics. I’m still in two minds about the pork-belly baklava … genius or just almost?

Swordfish skewers at Nostimo. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

It captures the sticky, multi-textured, semi-sweet deliciousness of the dessert, but slow cooked belly takes the place of nuts — stringier, more savoury although undoubtedly sweet for a meat course. I like it a lot.

But better, more staid, more expected is a simple dish of calamari ($18) with rice flour and ouzo mayonnaise. I missed the ouzo, so it’s subtle, but this is some of the most perfectly concocted calamari I’ve encountered — tender but firm, the deep-fried element just-there, crunchy tentacles, pliant everything else; for an everyday dish it is exemplary.

There is good souvlaki ($17), a lemon-dominant, creamy dish of chicken oregano ($27) and a wintry, ultra-tender, deliciously out of season lamb shoulder ($35) cut by yoghurt and spinach.

These examples merely skim the surface of what is an intriguing, colourful menu that straddles tradition and imagination very, very cleverly.

As, for that matter, does every aspect of Nostimo; one foot planted in Greek tradition, the other in something much more contemporary.

SCORES OUT OF 10

Food : 8 | Drinks: 8 | Vibe: 8 | Service: 8

NOSTIMO

29 Edmonstone St, South Brisbane

Ph: 3844 1166

Chef: David Tsirekas

Lunch daily; dinner, Mon-Sat

Vegetarian and gluten-free options