Kallos - Pop-Up Preview

It's pretty rare these days that a new venue exceeds our expectations.  When you've been around for as long as we have, and overseen literally thousands of new venue opening over the last 26 years, very little surprises you and that finely tuned barometer usually gets things pretty spot on in terms of what a venue will deliver, long before the doors even open. 

Now when we were invited down to Kallos over at Bankside Boulevard in Salford to see what the guys are doing, it was a welcome invitation as we are huge fans of all things Greek, and usually get to Greece at least once a year for either a sun holiday or food-led city break.  So we also know the ropes pretty when it comes to Hellenic food and bev.  Our expectations were accordingly set based upon all the above factors.

But it didn’t take very long for us to realise that on this occasion, our barometer had been a tad off kilta.  Service was super genuine and also very slick indeed, and the menu gives away secrets of what lies beneath in terms of quality.  You just felt very soon after sitting down, before anything was even served, that you were in for a real treat ahead.

Whilst Kallos is a morning and evening operation, the Café and Bar tag perhaps undersells them a bit, and they are also a very capable restaurant.  It wasn’t long before dish after dish, crammed with passion and love, started to land on our table as follows;

Pita Bread (£4) was absolutely superb, and made in house.  Soft, light, pillowy.  Some of the simplest foodstuffs are the most satisfying, and this was memorable to the point that we will compare future pitas to it.  We also ordered some Tzatziki (£4) to partner with the pita, as it's just a proven and tested tag team which never fails.

Dakos Salad (£9.5) was also excellent. Even the Cretan style rusks had been made in house, with a superb dressing lifting those British tomatoes well above their natural state.  Fresh, light, and brought some holiday vibes to the table.

Crispy Baby Potatoes (£4) were a simple yet lovely side.  Great quality spuds, fried to perfection with all those rough edges forming cracks which had been transformed into shards of crunch.

Feta Wrapped in Filo with Hot Honey (£10.5) was a star plate, and one for all tastes.  A block of Feta, made into a kind of pie via that Filo wrapping, bathed in lovely hot honey.

Lamb Shoulder Flatbread (£11.5) sounded fantastic, and it just was.  More superbly baked dough, topped with shredded lamb shoulder and cheese; this was another display of excellent baking.  It was more like a pizzetta than a 'flat' bread, but regardless, this was a splendid dish.

Now a whole section of the menu is dedicated to tinned fish, something which you don’t really think about when pondering Greek food. However, in Spain and even more notably in Portugal, tinned fish is an absolute institution.  Nobody does it better anywhere on Earth.  We went for some Nuri Tinned Mackerel (£16), which as per everything that Nuri put in tins is super high quality.  4 perfect fillets of oily goodness.  It was perfectly firm, loaded with flavour and also came served with another pita to dip into all that lovely oil.  The latter point clearly made us happy.

We ended our experience with a slice of traditional Orange Cake, something which we'd first experienced during a trip to Athens just a couple of months ago.  And this was a superb rendition; light, sticky, and loaded with orange flavour, but not overbearingly sweet as many syrup doused cakes often are.  These are house made by a friend of Kallos, who works as a pastry Chef in another esteemed kitchen in the city, and that pedigree shows.

I feel that need to point out that in addition to the above, the standard of bread making here is exceptional, with the pitas notably being some of the best that I can recall eating.  The level of detail and in house production here is superb.  It's all a far cry from the usual/stereotypical moussakas and gyros wraps that you see in the UK.  Having said that, some gyros on one of those flatbreads? A daily special perhaps Chef?

Also, the wine knowledge is handled by Ivan Milchev, one of a very small number of wine people in the city who are esteemed holders of a WSET Level 4 Diploma.  In short, you're in safe hands here and can be assured that the juice is all tip top, as is the storytelling and background behind every single glass.

Kallos is currently in 'pop up' stage, due to an ongoing discussion over which unit in the building they will permanently reside in.  Im sure that all that will be put to bed shortly, at which point Kallos will no doubt fine tune their décor into something more permanent.  But as a result, in the short term some of the décor is a tad sparce, but don’t let that put you off one bit.  The hospitality and quality of product on offer far trumps all of that, along with our expectations

** Our experience was gratefully comped **