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review

Photos by Jennifer Roberts for The Globe and Mail. Read Chris Nuttall-Smith's full review of Mamakas here.

The chef

Chris Kalisperas, it turns out, is a very good chef. His parents are from Cyprus. He’d been trapped in third-tier corporate restaurants for the better part of his career.

The room

The restaurant is long and narrow, a corner space with pine floors and whitewashed walls and polished copper pots hanging in the kitchen, all glowing warm incandescent from patio lights. The Greek words for “market and general store” are hand-lettered on the front window – the same logo that was on Mr. Tripi’s grandparents’ first store in Athens, after the war.

The food

Get all the dips, the smelts, eggplant, halloumi, horiatiki, a grilled fish and the lamb (and maybe also the chicken) and some dandelion too. And dessert.


An assortment of dishes including lamb chops with bulagr, red snapper, fasolakia, smelts, sardines along with the taramasalata, tzatziki, and kopanisti dips served with pita.