A new Greek eatery is about to hit Unley Road
Elliniko Eatery is set to open in April, bringing traditional Greek food with a “small shop, big flavour” approach to Malvern.
When Ioannis Patros and Anthony Savas think of Greek hospitality, they think of attention to detail.
“I notice that hospitality is a big deal there,” Anthony says.
“People are proud to be a waiter at a restaurant; people are proud to be a manager, or people are happy to just be involved in the gathering of a place and just to serve.
“Hospitality, at least for us Greeks, it’s how you make someone feel.
“I know people come and eat and that’s a big part of why people go out in the first place to feed their bellies, but… it’s making them feel like, yes, it’s a shop, but you’re entering our domain now, and we want to make you feel as comfortable as possible.
“That’s just a friendly reminder every time I go back.”
Along with wanting to make people feel comfortable, they say the Greek hospitality scene is solely centred around food.
“Our base is food – so we live off food. Everything we do – even if you go to a friend’s house for a visit, the table is going to be full,” Ioannis says.
“That’s who we are… we live, we breathe, and we sleep with food. That’s it.”
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Ioannis Patrios and Anthony Savas
For Ioannis and Anthony, they plan to implement these Greek-style hospitality traits into their upcoming Greek eatery, Elliniko, which they say will open in early April.
“Both of us actually went to Greece last year… I went to a lot of call it yiros houses or yiros restaurants. A lot of them that I bumped into were very upscaled and elegant,” Anthony says.
“Particularly in Athens, in the popular places, they moved to a more elegant, timeless colour scheme – what we’re trying to achieve here.
“And I thought this would be really cool in Adelaide.
“Our motto is small shop, big flavour. That’s what we really want to achieve, and that’s what we wanted to do.”
As the pair both respectively come from the Dodecanese Island, which is closer to Turkey, the interior choices will be inspired by eateries near that region.
“When you think Greece, you might think of blue and white, and that’s typical amongst Mykonos, Santorini, all those islands that everyone might know if you think of Greece,” Anthony says.
“But we come from the Dodecanese… and a lot of those islands are that really beautiful, rustic brown with the white tones, the creamy beige tones. We just feel like that’s absolutely timeless.
“We feel like it needs to be that really nice, elegant takeaway that people will walk in and go ‘oh wow, the shop looks beautiful’ before they’ve even tasted our food.
“We’ve got beautiful, rustic-style Venetian plastering. As soon as we saw it, we just instantly said ‘we need that to be in our shop’. And as you can tell, it’s got that really nice Mediterranean style finish and it’s just nice to look at.”
As for the food, they offer a range of traditional Greek dishes like chips and pita, moussaka, spanakopita and more.
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The meat is sourced directly from farms to go “above and beyond” and “bring that unique flavour back” at Elliniko.
“If you know how to cook and meet, that’s one thing. If you buy it from Coles or Woolies and then you buy straight from the farm, it’s going to be totally different,” Ioannis says.
“Because the big boys want to get cheap stuff to make a profit, but if you go to a farm and buy something, yes, it’s going to cost a little bit more, but you can’t match the quality.”
Part of the interior choices
The yiros will be a main feature on the Elliniko Eatery menu.
“Even in Greece, some places don’t put chips in there, some they do. We’re going to put chips in the yiros, but there’s no lettuce option,” Ioannis says.
“I think that was an Australian take. I think when yiros became prominent here in whatever decade that was, I think they put lettuce in yiros,” Anthony replies.
“It’s not like it’s terrible; it’s just not traditional, so we don’t want to do it.”
The location is in a shop complex on Unley Road – the same area as Abbots and Kinney and BFT – which was the selling point for the duo when deciding to open Elliniko Eatery.
“Getting the locations right, but getting the micro-locations right as well,” Anthony says.
They cite accessible car parking as a main draw card as they “don’t want people to be discouraged from travelling anywhere around Adelaide to come see [them]”.
“We live in Adelaide. We’re fussy like that,” Anthony says.
“Some of the best places are in the CBD – particularly from a hospitality or bar experience – but sometimes it is a bit off-putting if you have to walk 15, 20 minutes to the venue. It’s annoying.
“But we understand that that’s life. And we wanted to be in a popular suburb which would cater for what it is we’re trying to do.”
Elliniko Eatery is located at Shop 6 283-285 Unley Road, Malvern and is set to open in early April.
Connect with the business on Instagram for more.