Brilliant Salford Greek restaurant receives glowing national review

A fabulous Greek restaurant in Salford has received a glowing review from a top food critic, who described its food as providing ‘its own gorgeous kind of sunshine’.

Acclaimed restaurant critic Jay Rayner has heaped praise on Kallos in his Financial Times review.

The modest restaurant has been open for just over a year, but has already earned itself a place in the prestigious Michelin guide – and now a rave national review too.

Operated by couple Ioanna and Ivan, Kallos brings a taste of Santorini to their stripped-back, concrete-filled, light-flooded new space in Salford.

And while Jay Rayner admits in his review that Kallos’s interior hasn’t done much to lift this corner of Salford’s ‘badly organised grid of fast-rising apartment blocks’, the food itself ‘provides its own gorgeous kind of sunshine’.

Rayner heaped praise on Kallos’s phenomenal flatbreads, noting how it’s impossible to exercise restraint ‘in the face of bread this good’.

He also raved about their topped flatbreads (like one with ‘knots of sweet roasted lamb shoulder cooked until it has collapsed’), red prawns the length of a hand, and soft dolmades stuffed with rice and minced meat.

Kallos is part-owned by sommelier Ivan, who is striving to have the largest collection of Greek wines in the UK at the restaurant.

Jay Rayner noted both the selection and the affordability of this carefully-curated wine list, saying that it’s nice to find that ‘outside London, drinking well need not require the sale of a spare kidney or child’.

And then he came to the section of the menu that’s dedicated to premium tinned fish.

“It feels like the UK has woken up only relatively recently to the possibilities of impressively fine foods from a can,” he wrote.

“It is genuinely exciting to see Kallos devote a whole section of the menu to these treasures, even if it is basically the same victory of shopping that results in a good cheese board.

“But it takes both serious knowledge and a brave evangelical enthusiasm to offer a list like this.”

Rayner’s review went on to praise the tinned mackerel, served with a ‘balloon of hot bread’, pickled chillies, and an ‘aioli made with so much garlic, consenting adults should make sure to eat it together’.

Signing off his review, Jay Rayner wrote: “As the plate lands on the table, the sun finally comes out over both Salford and Kallos. Finally, the grey is banished. At last, all the beauty is here.”

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Featured image: The Manc Group