Greek Sunday Lunch at estiatorio Milos

Written by Martin Seymour | Editor, The Mayfair Foodie | About Me

I know I’m not alone in saying this: Sunday lunch is one of life’s great pleasures. Sitting around a table with family and friends, working steadily through course after course with absolutely nowhere else to be — it’s the perfect way to close out a good weekend.

We Brits love a Sunday roast, and rightly so; whether it’s homemade or in a restaurant or pub, it’s a tradition worth preserving. But we’re not the only nation with a sacred Sunday ritual — across the world, Sunday is the day families gather for good food and better company. So when I was invited back to estiatorio Milos in St James to try their Greek Sunday lunch, you can imagine how quickly I cleared my diary.

I’ve eaten at Milos before and came away raving about the fish — the fish market counter was harder to forget. The restaurant has deservedly built a reputation as one of London’s best seafood addresses. But Milos is equally proud of its Greek heritage, and the Sunday lunch felt like the perfect showcase for it.

1 The Menu

The Sunday set menu runs to seven Greek classics for £80 per person, and there’s also an à la carte version featuring all the set dishes and more, alongside Milos’s excellent fish à la carte and the famous Fish Market.

With no decisions to make on the set menu, we settled in with fresh bread and olive oil — Milos imports its own from Greece — while I mentally counted down the four weeks until my next trip there.

2 Onto the Food

Lunch began with spanakopita, the classic Greek pie of filo pastry, spinach, feta and fresh herbs. You’ve probably had a version of this before; Milos’s was simply excellent — a tried-and-tested combination and about as good an opener as you could hope for.

Next we strayed off-piste, on our waiter’s recommendation, for the kolokythokeftedes — courgette fritters with yoghurt, feta and herbs, served alongside a beautifully simple Easter salad dressed in olive oil. I’m salivating just writing about them: light, fluffy, and proof that the sign of a good kitchen is making the simple things taste extraordinary.

That was our one detour. From here on in, it was set menu all the way.

Next came gigantes — giant Greek butter beans in tomato sauce, grown, I’m told, in the country’s northern mountains and slow-cooked until meltingly soft. They arrived alongside kefalotyri saganaki and loukaniko, a Greek sausage, and both dishes earned their place on the table. The saganaki had a crust that reminded me, in the best possible way, of the finest cheese on toast — which is a very good thing in my book — while the sausage paired beautifully with the beans.

The final side was a wonderfully creamy tzatziki, served with feather-light pitta — just as well, given the table was starting to resemble a banquet.

We sat back for a moment to take stock, fully aware of what was still to come.

And what was still to come: spit-roasted spring lamb with oven-baked potatoes, as beloved by the Greeks as it deserves to be. The lamb is cooked for six or seven hours, which by my maths means some very dedicated chef was starting the spit at around five in the morning — I hope they got some sleep afterwards, because the results were sensational. Served simply with beautifully seasoned potatoes, it was a fitting, and thoroughly traditional, finale.

Spring lamb served with oven- baked potatoes

Every dish was beautifully presented. I’ve always admired the precision of Greek cuisine, and Milos showcased that skill perfectly. Looking back over the choices, I think we chose well; there were plenty of highlights and no shortage of dishes left for another visit. Our first taste of Milos’s Greek Sunday lunch was a memorable one.

3 The Verdict

The lunch closed with a glass of mastiha, a Greek digestif made from tree resin grown exclusively on the island of Chios, said to carry medicinal powers. Whatever those powers are, they clearly worked — because by the time the bill arrived, I’d made peace with lunch drifting into a three-hour affair and had already started planning my next trip to Greece.

This was my second visit to Milos, and I liked it even more than the first. I’ll admit to a little bias here — a long, lazy lunch on a Greek terrace is one of my favourite things in the world — but Milos’s Sunday set menu comes about as close to bottling that feeling as you’ll find in SW1. At £80 a head for seven courses, it isn’t cheap, but then again, neither is a flight to Athens, and this Sunday tradition gives plenty of tavernas a run for their money.

If you love your Sunday roast but fancy swapping Yorkshire puddings for spanakopita every so often, estiatorio Milos’s Greek Sunday lunch is well worth the detour.