Restaurant: Lemonia
Location : Primrose Hill
By Boeing: 6611 miles
By Boris Bike: 1.4 miles
The minute you walk through the door of Lemonia you leave the paving of Primrose Hill for a Phoenician paradise of hanging baskets and sun-drenched platters of plenty. Its waiters twist and pirouette as they weave a path between boisterous businessmen, courting couples and the paparazzi princesses of the Primrose Hill crowd serving the bounty of Cyprus’s groves and gardens. For over thirty years it has been enticing diners with the promise of rest and retsina to break up the routine of a working week.
Cyprus has always been a favoured destination for the English. When planes were first built to fly passengers rather than pilots sun worshippers sought to escape to somewhere exotic but would no sooner cross a continent than take a gap year before university. The far flung outpost of this short haul empire was a hypnotic island of azure waters, ancient temples and lemon scented valleys. Though European in personality it is Middle Eastern in proximity, closer to the Cedar lined coast of Lebanon than the Greece. It was as exotic as a European break could be, and far classier and classical than Canvey Island or the Costa Del Sol. As I sat down at my table under terracotta tiles I shared their sense of adventure, foreign, unquestionably, but just familiar enough to rest at ease.
Cyprus’s beauty is quite literally the stuff of legend, being the birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty But in ancient times as in modern this island, in the curtilage of Europe but on the cusp of Asia, was claimed by two different traditions. Though the Greek Aphrodite is better known and more widely celebrated she stole the limelight and lustre of the far older Phoenician Astarte. To this day Cyprus remains divided, with the South looking west to Greece and Europe and the North’s eyes cast east to Turkey and Asia Minor.
A Cypriot menu reflects this heritage, drawing tastes and traditions from both Greece and Turkey, Occident and Ottoman. Whether you are served a Greek Souvlaki or a Turkish Shish the taste is equally evocative of the island. In Lemonia the italics on the menu are in Greek but a Turkish taverna draws from the same inspiration. While the tongue may be different, the flesh and fillets are the same.
It is fitting for a birthplace of Gods that food is served in feasts. The rich, verdant landscape and sun-drenched climate provide an over-flowing basket of fruit and vegetables for the Cypriot table. Meals are served as a Mezzes, dish after dish served until the eyes forget to count the courses. Large families and chattering friends ate bowls of Okra, hummus, Tzatziki, stuffed vine leaves, spiced meatballs, Calamari rings and grilled Halloumi cheese as waiters circled with dishes, squeezing ever more dishes on laden tables. In Limassol these would have been supplemented further with local tastes thought a little too bold for English tastes, such as pickled quails eggs, sautéed snails and rams testes.
Mezze, the perfect meal for the indecisive, provides samples of specialities that are forever replenished. This food format, also widespread across the Middle East and Arabia, makes for lively, gregarious dining as people discover new dishes and pass them on to friends to try. Mezze is not marked by restraint and neither is the etiquette of those who enjoy it, who lean and ladle with a flurry of elbows. In Lemonia’s light and airy Orangery, diners, bathed in early evening sun, could almost be eating al fresco in a Lemon grove, dishes lined the length and breadth of long trestle tables. Sepia pictures, terracotta pots and vines cascading from ceiling-hung baskets add to an authentic air. It is one restaurant that prides itself in putting punters in their place, a place where they feel more on holiday than at home.
But Mezze works best with large groups and couples at smaller tables tend to eat conventional courses. But with an abundance of dishes on offer Cypriot waiters find specific tastes harder to cater for. My friend, A celiac, asked whether she could eat the Dolmades. Our waiter, amiable and attentive, left us to check. On his return he declared emphatically, ‘anything I serve, you can eat.’ We ordered Dolmades and Lountza (smoked pork tenderloin). He left us with our order but paused, and returned. “A basket of bread for you both?” We had added a complex caveat to the Cypriot cycle: He serves, we eat.
Baulking at paying £12 for a kebab (Souvlaki) I ordered Tavvas, a traditional lamb stew infused with cumin. It was so slow cooked it must have matured from lamb to mutton in the pot. A bottle of the local tipple, the fiery wine Retsina, added an acidic accompaniment.
While mains are succulent and delicately spiced, desserts are sweet. Mine resembled a honey-drenched shredded wheat covering sugar-swamped pistachios and hazelnuts. As if this wasn’t sweet enough I washed it down with the oldest wine in the world, the syrupy, Sherry-like Commandaria. If Aphrodite toasted to her beauty, it would have been this nectar passing her luscious lips.
It was delicious, but so heavy that my chin sunk to rest to rest on my chest, like a gluttonous monk preying for absolution.
Like those sixties tourists I left Cyprus with many anecdotes and mild Angina; an exotic land of myths and Mezze that lies in Europe, but looks out beyond.
