Dinner at Zephyr feels breezy. That may be the intention: this place is named after the Greek god of the west wind, who gently ushers in the summer.
Those that can stomach the Portobello Road prices here will enjoy plate after shared plate of painstakingly prepared delicacies, in a relaxed but elegant setting.
Zephyr London
The interior
The new Notting Hill fixture is the latest restaurant from the Pachamama Group, to date known for Peruvian menus, but now venturing into Greek food. On the warm summer nights London has been enjoying this August, there’s definitely an air of the Mediterranean about the place.
With its doors thrown wide to accommodate al fresco dining, natural light cascades deep into the coolly toned, minimally decorated space, while its abundance of hard surfaces makes it ring with conversation. Service is generally quick, attentive, not unfriendly.
The food
The mastermind behind the food is executive chef John Skotidas, formerly of the nearby Mazi, who is known for mixing Greek cuisine with influences from South America and beyond.
Zephyr London
The menu is divided into silly headings that trample the line between evocative and pretentious, like “sea” and “raw”, making its more straightforward ones (“wines”, “desserts”) seem comparatively banal. In the more head-scratching example of the former type, “soil” and “land” are separate categories, but apparently only one of these produces vegetables: who knew?
Only a menu like this could list a Greek salad at £18 – but then again, what a Greek salad it is. No weedy feta crumbs: here the signature cheese comes as a large rectangular wodge, cross-cut into four and sat proudly atop a mound of skinned tomatoes, zinging capers, and wafer-thin slices of dewy red onions and green peppers, the lot of it doused in premium olive oil. A triumph.
Similar success for the gentle aubergine dish. Skinned and showing its green-brown flesh, it arrives looking like a deflated balloon, sprinkled with nuts and spices and laid across a tart swipe of citrus yoghurt. The potato terrine, too, impresses: this smoky, flaky, truffle-topped extravagance might have been my highlight had it not been curiously cold in the middle.
Zephyr London
Elsewhere the flavours are big, bold and enjoyably straightforward. The charcoal-grilled peppers offer three takes on the vegetable, one of which (the long green) really brings the heat. Then there’s the meat and fish selection – for me and my dining partner, this was salt-flecked rib-eye steak served on the bone, its seared fat intermittently crispy, and accompanied by a jus as thick as gravy; and then a punchy grilled sea-bass, served whole with Amarillo butter – impeccable.
Zephyr London
Dessert options include loukoumades. Listed as “Greek donuts”, they’re really puffy fried dough balls, served with a super-sweet dulce de leche flavoured with coffee. And, for the adventurous, the wine menu extends to a sparkling red, or “esoterico” orange. We drank the latter, which offered a necessarily sharp foil to the hearty food.
Zephyr London
The verdict
Even shortly after opening, it’s obvious that Zephyr is already a hit with smart, flush diners, and there’s certainly a lot to enjoy about the space and the intermittently revelatory menu. Whether Zephyr has the charm to pull diners back time and again for the £100 per head that’s so easy to spend here, I’m less sure – for me, there was so little warmth to the experience, I wonder how Zephyr’s poor namesake feels.
Zephyr, 100 Portobello Rd, London W11 2QD; zephyr.london
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