Source : the age
Despite its name, Malvern’s new three-storey Helios Hotel isn’t a pub. It’s a modern Greek restaurant by an Athenian chef with ambitions to match its 300-person capacity.
“We didn’t call it a ‘hotel’ because we want it to be casual, but because we want people to feel that this is a gathering place,” says chef Ioannis Kasidokostas, who – alongside his wife and business partner Maria Tsilfoglou – is behind the Glenferrie Road newcomer.
Since opening Aegli in South Melbourne last winter, the couple has been working to provide a counterpoint to the Greek comfort food having a moment in Melbourne. Leaning into his experience at Michelin-starred fine diners in Athens, Kasidokostas serves more cheffy, more conceptual versions of traditional and regional Greek dishes.
“There’s obviously been a massive renaissance in Greek restaurants [in Melbourne],” Kasidokostas says. “We don’t present ourselves as being better than anyone else … we just want to shine a light on Greek cuisine from a different angle, from the chef’s angle.” (It’s partly why the venue is named after the ancient Greek god of the sun.)
Helios Hotel will have the same style of food and service as Aegli, but on a larger scale. In fact, Kasidokostas says, it’s six times the size of Sowl, the broadly Mediterranean restaurant he and Tsilfoglou closed in Carnegie in July to focus their attention on Helios.
“I was eyeing this place off eight years ago,” says Kasidokostas of the 1200-square-metre site, formerly home to Sagra. Generously spaced tables span the ground-floor dining room and group-friendly mezzanine that overlooks it, with other spaces reserved for private dining and events – including the covered, light-filled rooftop.
Dishes you might recognise by name on the menu come together a little differently on the plate.
Dolmades swap the rudimentary minced meat for prawns, which are combined with rice, wrapped in silverbeet and charred in the josper oven. They’re dressed in “something like XO but more acidic” that’s made with prawn heads and oil left over from sizzling dry-aged loukaniko (sausage). “It’s got layers and layers of flavour,” says Kasidokostas.
Lamb shoulder is swathed in vine leaves and slow-cooked until melt-in-your-mouth tenderness, its own juices combining with grape and carob molasses to form a rich, chocolatey sauce.
Thoughtful vegetarian plates round out the offering, whether that’s horta – a medley of pot-cooked wild greens that Aegli sells 30 kilos of each week – or a wood-fired cabbage salad.
There are some on-theme cocktails, like a gin basil smash that subs in the Greek spirit tsipouro, and a negroni enlivened with Greek bitters. But the wine list is where you’ll find most excitement. Kasidokostas and Tsilfoglou are passionate about making less common Greek varietals more accessible.
If, for example, you enjoy the kidonitsa (a rare, ancient grape found in Greece’s Peloponnese region) you try at dinner, you can buy a bottle to take home – at 40 per cent off the wine list’s price. Helios Hotel might not be a pub, but its general liquor licence means it can also function as a bottle shop.
