When my dining comrade announced to me that he had booked a Greek restaurant for our planned get-together, the prospect sounded highly enticing. Given the chance to swap a cold and damp November day in London for the warmth and charm of Greece – if even just for a couple of hours – what could be more enticing? Sadly, promise and delivery at Estriatorio Milos were two very different things.
I’m not sure when it first began to go wrong. Maybe it was the sight of an absurdly large and ostentatious wooden door that framed the entrance to Milos and was guarded by a doorman-cum-bouncer even on a Monday lunchtime. This was the antithesis of the welcome one might have expected and about a million miles away from a cosy Athenian taverna. Any restaurant that boasts outlets in Miami, Las Vegas and the like is also bound to raise my hackles. Even if Milos began with humble roots, these would almost certainly have been lost in the backers’ quest for global domination.
Maybe food would provide some form of redemption? Well, the fresh fish bar (pictured) certainly looked enticing; the pricing on the menu less so. £45 for a three-course set lunch hardly constitutes a bargain in London, even in swanky St James. But hold on a moment, if you want oysters as a starter, that will be a £5 surcharge. Fancy lobster pasta for your main? Well then, Milos will add £15 to your bill. It goes on.
If you’re stumping up, you at least might expect good food. Milos had no higher than a 50% success rate. It was hard to fault my salmon tartare starter, but my comrade’s Greek salad looked as if zero effort had been put into it: a lump of feta was plonked into a bowl along with some tomato and greens. Whereas I could easily have eaten double my portion, my comrade was barely able to finish half of his. Quality perhaps should be the angle here over quantity. Onto the mains and my comrade probably made the better choice with the lobster pasta (albeit charged at a premium). My sea bream was tasty enough, especially with the olive oil and caper marinade but the accompanying broccoli and cauliflower side was unnervingly reminiscent of a school meal.
We passed on puddings, but did Milos take money off our bill, despite only consuming two courses? No prizes for guessing the answer. To add further insult to injury, I was able to spot from a distance our forlorn waiter trying – and initially failing – to identify which table to bring our coffees to. On a second pass, he delivered them, but the case for Milos had been lost long prior to this.