Oikos is the new Greek Res­taur­ant, in the the south­ern most southest part of Miramar,  on the 2 bus route, and close to the cycle tun­nel. This is firmly in Greek ter­rit­ory of Wel­ling­ton. The loc­al fish’n’­chip shops also serve a vari­ant of Greek food (yer­os mostly), which is a deli­cious altern­at­ive to fried fish. There’s Greek clubs and soci­et­ies, a Greek shop in Kil­birnie nearby (Taste of Greece), and many loc­al kiwis will declare their Greek her­it­age, speak­ing some Greek lan­guage in their homes, and trips to Greece to vis­it the land of their par­ents and grand­par­ents. So I expec­ted this to be authen­t­ic Greek but also kiwi as.

This new res­taur­ant is in an area under-served by good food. North Miramar is awash with amaz­ing res­taur­ants (The Lar­der, Cafe Polo, La Boca­loca) but South Miramar and Strath­more have only had the amaz­ing Bur­ger King (and maybe Gypsy Kit­chen for lunch).

It’s plaus­ible you could vis­it this res­taur­ant on the way to the air­port (after check­ing in lug­gage even). This loc­al block of shops dates from before the air­port was built. The dairy has long ago shut down, after the pet­rol sta­tion opened. The Chinese res­taur­ant burned down dra­mat­ic­ally last year.

We booked a table online – this is lovely instant way to book a table. I received a text mes­sage ask­ing me to con­firm the book­ing (by fol­low­ing a link). 10 minutes later they phoned us to con­firm again. The line was noisy and my hear­ing is ter­rible. By now we were well and truly con­firmed.

Gosh it’s a lovely tiny res­taur­ant. Sooth­ing green col­ours with nat­ur­al wood. They’ve used those cage light shades that don’t actu­ally shade the light down­wards but they look pretty.

The staff were super busy. It was tricky to flag them down. They are indeed extremely pop­u­lar. While we waited for someone to notice us at our table a crowd formed inquir­ing for a table. Most were turned away, as they were fully booked. Some decided to get takeaway.

We man­aged to order. Pita breads with tztatiki. Lamb Kleftiko. Chick­en Kala­maki. Spet­so­fai pork saus­age. The lamb melted, as all good slow cooked red meat should. It was sticky sweet, but not too sticky sweet. The pork was salty, but not too salty. The chick­en a bit dry but oth­ers din­ing with us declared it the best of the dishes. We had to re-order more pita bread a few times.

Alas, just as out meals turned up, the staff arrived with a dilemma. They’d double booked our table. Could we move?  We guess so. We were moved into the win­dow, shar­ing with anoth­er group – onto high stools at a high table, which was a bit awk­ward for the shortest mem­bers of our group (taku tamāhine, whitu).

But I have great news to report. They gave us free dessert to make amends. Let me describe the dessert. There was Louku­mades, which are dough­nut balls covered in the most per­fect honey, served with icecream. And there was a chocol­ate bak­lava. Our young­est was very amused that it came with “soil”.

The bill? Three people for $130. That’s with dessert free and a very very lovely wine.