The Greek on Halifax Open 7 days for
breakfast, lunch & dinner
Phone 08 8223 3336
for bookings


 
LifeStyle Food  

The restaurant offers a seasonal menu of staple authentic meals, while exploring creative new dishes with weekly specials. Indulge in the delicious deserts available or a fine glass of wine. With dining available inside and out, The Greek on Halifax is in an ideal location for a coffee, wine or meal.

Your host Mary Galantomos is a second generation Greek-Australian with a passion for food and wine. She invites you to join her and experience her unique slant on traditional Greek dining at The Greek on Halifax.

Watch the video here:
http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/restaurants/the-greek-on-halifax

 

Postcards
www.postcards-sa.com.au

 

The Greek on Halifax: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia

Its chimney remains a prominent landmark in the southeast of the city and a reminder of a time when you'd needed to have your wits about you when entering Halifax Street. A convoy of Adelaide City Council trucks paid regular visits to this part of town feeding an insatiable monster, which played a key role in the early life of our fair city.

“This magnificent thirty five metre chimney was built in 1909 and was part of what was known as the Heenan Patent Refuse Destructor. It was used to incinerate the city rubbish and the rubbish carts came from miles around.”

It's hard to imagine now, but The Destructor was operating until the early 1950s. For more than forty years the bulk of Adelaide's rubbish was brought here until a special committee - set up to investigate alternatives for rubbish disposal - opted for the Wingfield dump in 1952. The Destructor may not have been popular with city residents but it was certainly effective.

“The Destructor worked twenty four hours a day and the furnaces produced so much heat that the resultant steam powered an electric generator. In its heyday the generator supplied this whole site. It even supplied excess electricity back to the Adelaide Electric Company which it used to light the nearby streets.”

Now the Destructor is a key feature of an inner city development, complete with apartments and a very popular restaurant known as The Greek on Halifax. The furnaces may have gone but out in the kitchen there's still plenty of heat as father and son team, Tony and Peter Xenos keep up with the orders. A photo of young Peter on a village donkey features prominently in the restaurant along with others, which record days past back in the old country and the new.

Tony Xenos came to Australia in 1956 from the island of Lesbos. He and his family brought with them recipes for some fantastic Greek desserts along with all the other tips, which make simple Greek cuisine so popular today. For fellow business partner Mary Galantomos, The Greek On Halifax, draws on family recipes which she and nephew Peter remember from their childhood days - hopefully recreating a little bit of Greek village life in the heart of Adelaide.

“For a lot of the people that have been overseas it rekindles memories of being overseas and how they enjoyed their food.”

The Greek on Halifax team are always keen to capitalise on the freshness of the food available in South Australia like the fresh prawns chef Alan Hickey uses to cook up a classic dish from the Greek islands, "Saganaki Prawns".

“Add our herb olive to the pan. Quickly add the prawns. Now we're going to add our dry white wine to the prawns. Keeping the pan hot with a little flame we add our basil and tomato sauce.”

This is simplicity itself. Once the prawns are cooked in the sauce Alan adds a few dollops of feta cheese. When melted it's transferred to the skillet for serving.

“We serve it with a little rice on the side and some nice strong salad greens such as rocket or mozuma. That brings out the flavour of the dish. And that's it.”

Saganaki Prawns - just one of the dishes on the menu at The Greek on Halifax. It's open daily for lunch and dinner.

 
Qantas The Australian Way May 2009  

The Greek shines as a winter destination, with its small rooms given intimacy and warmth from walls of fine red bricks, remnants of its century-old heritage as the city’s refuse destructor complex. Fortunately, the kitchen drum beats to a different sense of history, overseen by Greek-Australian Mary Galantomos and reflected by the many family photographs on the walls.

This is the right place for high-quality, home-style Greek cooking, ranging from an attractive selection of entree-sized meze dishes – for those who want to fill the available table space with lots of different flavours that can be shared – to enormous seafood platters and an aptly named Olympian meat platter. Top choices among the meze include mushrooms stuffed with roast capsicum and eggplant, and sausages char-grilled with ouzo-marinated orange slices.

Among the main courses, the baby goat braised in a red wine and tomato sauce or the slow-cooked lamb shanks make perfect cool-weather dining. Sunday breakfast provides dishes such as a village omelette with zucchini and kefalograveria cheese.

Open: breakfast Sat-Sun, lunch & dinner daily. Licensed. Mains $21-$30, platters $80-$100.

 
July 19, 2006  

When this restaurant opened three years ago its location was needed in the title because Halifax St was in a restaurant-free zone of the city and seemed an unlikely spot for Greek taverna ambience.

But Adelaide¹s transformation to a dormitory city has swept forward since then, and the restaurant is now surrounded by apartments, townhouses and natty renovations.

The restaurant offers small-room dining, where diners feel among a few privileged tables around a big servery and kitchen. Outside are a couple of roomy areas, including the spacious front footpath and promenade.

The restaurant¹s best food is char-grilled octopus and char-grilled lamb on skewers and its ³Tour of Greece² mezes, a traditional selection of dips and delicacies served with warm pitta bread, is also exceptional.

A lamb dish is three lengths of pan-fried fillet atop a cous cous base, flavoured with garlic, chilli, fennel, basil; the whole thing fluid with red wine sauce.

A chicken main, with a molten pocket of cheeses - fetta, haloumi and kefalograviera - is pan-fried and served on a tomato and artichoke base.
Desserts include galaktoboureko, baklava and excellent coffee.

 
Qantas - The Australian Way Sept 2003  
This cheery place makes a welcome addition to the Adelaide dining scene, and Dimitri Morphopous cooks simple, traditional dishes that are full of flavour. To start, try the share platters of mixed dips of the "tour of Greece" selection of mezze goodies -dolmathes, pickled octopus, kefthedes (spicy meatballs), cheese, olives and dips. Then, who could resist saganaki (char-grilled) kefalograviera or haloumi cheeses with roasted cherry tomatoes, or the crispy whitebait? Greek staples, such as yhiros and moussaka, are popular. Also recommended are the "Colossus" char-grilled mixed meats plate, the saganaki prawns, and the grilled quail served with lemon and olive oil. there are a few Greek wines on offer, but the list is mainly South Australian drops.
The Adelaide Review
Number 223, April 2002

Revolving chimneys
By John McGrath
 
The Adelaide City Council's Halifax Street development site has happened after not very many years wait, a twinkling of an eye really in council-think. The old incinerator building and chimney have been kept and renovated. As much as I would like to report a revolving chimney restaurant, I'll have to settle for one at ground level - The Greek on Halifax. Not a bad landmark if you are starting a restaurant.The restaurant conversion is sensible and pleasing to sit in or about. Considering the restrictions that were no doubt laid down it is probably extremely clever. The design is in mid-eighties Sydney restaurant style. Remember the discovery of stressed concrete, arid is in, Darlings? The Greek has black and white pictures of the owners' families in Australia and on the isle of Lesbos. Friendly without falling into that blue and white tourist picture trap.The menu deserves a good peering at - it isn't a list of the same old Greek regulars. Cypriot rissoles call Sheftalia are wrapped in caul. Caul is God's Gladwrap. Ask your butcher if you haven't seen or used it. It's invaluable for barbeque burgers. There is black-eyed bean and spinach salad or grape, rocket and haloumi salad.I have been here for breakfast (Greek sausage and cheese omelette), play-lunch, lunch and dinner. I've eaten a yiros in pitta takeaway. I'm pretty impressed. I think this place has gone straight to the top of the Greek firmament. I've tried the mixed platters and the chicken, the coffee and the cakes. The cakes, made on the premises, are not the sorts that want your metal fillings to come dancing out of their burrows, they are gently sweet.
The Greek's first wine list is just OK, but you can pick some winners; for $21.50, the Montana (NZ) Pinot Noir is good lunchtime value.Be careful of Halifax Street if you haven't been down it recently. The once wide street has been throttled to one lance with right-angled parking. It won't last long I suppose. It should only take a couple of fatalities to reverse the council's bizarre and costly uglification.But back to the restaurant. The good is fresh, beautifully cooked and good value. There is a proper yiros rotisserie. The staff are obviously all proud of The Greek; they should be. Special mention for the woman with those shoes.Their plans for a winter menu sound exciting; there are rumblings about Avgolemono soup, a rarely seen Greek soup. It is one of those very simple dishes that are impossible to mess up, but everyone does. It is a big time comfort dish and is rumoured to cure sudden death.The Greek has been successful in the few weeks since opening; it should keep on rolling forever.
The Advertiser:
food & wine

By Tony Baker
 
The puzzling thing about the flowering of the city is that it took so long. It was talked about in the '70s, and not only by Don Dunstan in euphoric and visionary mood. It was discussed at repetitious length in the '80s before people actually began to strand in the rhetoric.What it's all about doesn't look and get better than at the Greek on Halifax, where the city council's old incinerator, chimney and general dump is a newborn hamlet. It is possible, more than possible, to quibble about the streetscaping which has been not so much narrowed as left gasping for a bypass. But the other side of that coin is that the pavement is widened to provide pavement seating. Which brings us immediately to the built charms of the Greek on Halifax.

It is a quite sassy bit of design. Behind is the preserved chimney of the old incinerator, a reflection of the official Adelaide view that the pyramids of Egypt and hanging gardens of Babylon were on a par with an 1836 midden. Musn't digress. GoH has a beguiling intimacy. It sprawls from pavements back to several rooms so that it manages the paradox of being chic and homely.This is reinforced by the way the Xenos and Galantomos families have set about attracting the customers. Patriarch Tony Xenos has been rattling the pots and pans in Adelaide restaurants for about 40 years. But is the next generation, Peter Xenos and Maria Galantomos, who have imprinted the personalities. This is not - praise the Lord and pass the ammunition - a blue-and-white, smash-the-plates and play-the-Zorba Greek pastiche.

The enlarged family photographs around the walls of the main room depict a migrant generation's origins and rites of passage.Let's not get too high falutin' here: the food is good and true and, if you are in snack vein, startling cheap, with Greek coffee for $2.50 and a syrupy cakes for $3.50. Lili - originally Vassiliki Maros - was quite misty-eyed when she saw the ornamental triangular carrying trays used to convey Greek food and the obligatory cold water from counter to customer. When she then saw they were real tools of hospitality, not artifacts, used to actually convey the stuff, I knew I dare not criticise this joint for want of authenticity. Not that I would have done so anyways, save in two minor matters. They really should not add lettuce to what was otherwise a prefect Greek salad, and the retsina wine they listed lacked that resin quality that makes your toenails curl. So we summoned bottles of the emergent and Moorish Three Witches white and, in a matter befitting the new Adelaide as much as the lost Athens, an array of mezethakia (bites, nibbles, occidental yum cha) starters. Loukanika are halvedsmall sausages originally served here with ouzo-baked wedges of fresh orange. Spanokopitta re the spinach and cheese triangles which I can always enrage Vassiliki by likening to pasties. One of two saganaki dishes was a salty, char-grilled haloumi cheese with roasted cherry tomatoes.Despite the presence of the lettuce, the salad was good enough to call for a reprise, with a plate of char-grilled meats, mainly meatballs, ouvlakia and yiros.Thence to a true, creamy, quite voluptuous kataiffi and the thought that we had at least lasted long enough to enjoy the new Adelaide city as it blossomed.
South Australia Special

In great taste November 29, 2003
 
South Australia has an enviable range of places to eat and drink.
Howard Twelftree samples the good life.Knowledgeable Greeks say the Greek restaurant food in Oz is better than its equivalent back home. Whatever, the food at the Greek on Halifax is among the best in Australia. You can't miss the place - look for the giant brick incinerator chimney.
Australian Gourmet Traveller: 2004 Restaurant Guide Australia  
Not everyone would think of setting up a restaurant in the shadow of an old refuse incinerator, but the Greek on Halifax has done so with inventive zeal, creating a light and airy restaurant of several rooms with a broad pavement dining area. Old photographs depict the two related families that run the restaurant, showing them in Greece and as newly arrived Australian immigrants. A high quality home-style feel prevails in the kitchen, overseen by patriarch Tony Xenos.