The Mouth: Greek Yum Cha? Yes, it’s a thing at Bexley Golf Club. But is it any good?

Dulwich Hill’s famous old Aegean Restaurant now has an outpost at Bexley Golf Club. This is Aegean 2.0 and it is serving up bright and simple food.

The suburb of Bexley, 14 kilometres southwest of the CBD, is home to large Chinese (13.8 per cent) and Greek (94 per cent) populations, according to the most recent Census numbers.

So perhaps it is only natural that the Australian heirs to these two ancient civilisations would team up to give us … Greek yum cha.

This week we find ourselves at Bexley Golf Club, a happy, homey 18-holer with a bright and airy dining room overlooking the links which recently opened its kitchen operation to Dulwich Hill’s famous old Aegean Restaurant (this new outpost they call Aegean 2.0).

Two things to get out of the way straight off the bat.

Firstly, and sadly, this is not traditional yum cha: We were hoping for old Greek yiayias pushing us to try the keftides. The phrase “yum cha” seems to suggest more “Sunday lunch”.

Bexley Golf Club has welcomed a Greek yum cha restaurant.

We’ll forgive them.

Secondly, and this is the more important point: This is not some attempt to gussy up Greek food into something it is not.

Greek food is bright and simple. Bexley’s ‘yum cha’ gets that right.

For a variety of reasons, Greek food resists attempts to fancify it more than just about another cuisine, and thank God they haven’t tried to turn this into some hipster “taverna” where you get hit for $18 to choke down a glass of retsina.

Instead, this is bright and simple stuff.

The usual dips arrive: Taramasalata, hummus, tzatziki, each with a depth that suggests they were made properly and not just scooped out of a food service bucket.

There are friend prawns and calamari (the latter of which feel almost like, well, the salt and pepper squid you’d get at a Cantonese yum cha, so there you go).

The dips!

The grilled meats!

A plate of dolmades appears, hand rolled and almost creamy inside, a real discovery, and our table sounded like newly minted sommeliers trying to identify what was in those lamb meatballs – cumin? cinnamon? ground coriander?

There was a plate of grilled meats, but most of that wound up getting taken home for a snack later. Naturally we were disappointed in ourselves that we did not have room to order a moussaka for dessert (and also, that there was no baklava, though we are informed that is coming).

This is simple food, mostly good food, and there’s a lot of it, all tucked up in a funny little spot where you’d least expect it. At $49 a head it’s a bargain because you won’t need dinner.

— The Mouth is an undercover food critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.