The Kitchen, Tigaki, Kos Island, Greece
The Kitchen is one of the classier restaurants in Tigaki and seems to be one of five establishments run by the same people – the others being the adjoining Residence (apartments) and Bar (a bar!) and then much further along the strip on the opposite side of the road More (a great bar mostly full of ze Germans serving excellent cocktails), Meni (another fancy pants restaurant – see later post) – with adjoining apartments.
They all share a European vibe with lots of white furniture and minimalistic design and an annoying habit of reversing letters in their names. The tat-from-a-bag sellers (selling the usual stuff – novelty lighters, laser pens etc.) will generally get turned away by the maître de of the two restaurants.
The Kitchen serves Greek and Italian cuisine, is decorating with strings of garlic cloves, has plinkety plonk piano musak and a relaxed vibe – perhaps too relaxed as the service was uber-slow – slowest of all the restaurants we visited and it wasn’t busy at all when we ate there. We had heard bad things about it last year, along the lines of it having more style than good food, but I’m always up for giving places a try and forming my own opinions.
The English/German menu consisted mostly of pasta, pizza, steaks and traditional Greek dishes. Siggy ordered moussaka and I ordered a beef tagliata which I confused with tagiatelli. I was a bit curious why they would serve pasta with chips but then the Greeks seem to have a fondness for multiple carbs on a plate – I have more than once had a plate with rice, fries, oven potatoes and a jacket potato on it. Despite the fancy appearance of the restaurant the pricing was quite reasonable.
When the food finally arrived I discovered that I wasn’t going to eat pasta and chips after all. The beef tagliata was a tasty dish consisting of sliced beef with parmesan shavings, a Bisto flavour gravy (told you I wasn’t a food snob didn’t I?) served on a robust, almost spinachy, bed of blanched rocket and pile of seasoned potato wedge-like chips (and yes one of them was rather green). The combination of parmesan and gravy was a bit odd on the palette but the meat was cooked to my ‘medium’ specification very well.
Siggy’s moussaka came in a pot which stayed hot for the duration of the meal despite the breeze that managed to cool my food rather too quickly. The moussaka included courgette as well as aubergine which is something that seems particular to Kos.
For dessert I had tiramisu (surprise surprise) served with hot caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and made with white chocolate – so perhaps disqualified from my quest for the perfect tiramisu due to the non-traditional ingredient.
The meal included post-payment double schnapps on the house which helped us forget how slow the service had been.
All photography (c) Matthew Haynes.
couchmagpie 