Taverna Sokrates
Greek food in Nørrebro
Taverna Sokrates
Baggesensgade 13
2200 Copenhagen N
Open every day from 16:00 to 23:00
Tel: 35 36 36 81
Prices around 250 kr pp based on 3 courses and wine
Also does takeaways
You tend to know what you are getting into when entering a Greek restaurant. The dishes are for the most part familiar. After all, who hasn’t been seduced by the Ionian sun at least once? And unlike, say, Italian or even Spanish restaurants, the Greeks are happy to reheat those holiday feelings and memories that are fading faster than the tourist board posters of the Acropolis up on the wall. The Taverna Sokrates, situated in Nørrebro, is happy to dwell in that cosy domain of the familiar. Hellenic fonts adorn the menus, musty oddly-shaped bottles jacketed in bristly wicker sit on shelves while plastic crabs and starfish chase each other in drooping nets hanging from the ceiling.
I’d come here on a recommendation. My dinner companion, a Norrebroian, lives close by and knows a secret or two about where is good to eat in Copenhagen’s most ‘exotic’ quarter. ‘People in Denmark call me Manuel,’ says Manolix Tsourdis, our genteel and charismatic host for the evening, ‘it’s easier for them to remember.’
To many, Greek cuisine conjures up images of lamb and mint, yoghurt and moussaka. ‘Yes, most people opt for the moussaka – which is very good – but tonight I am recommending something a little bit different,’ says Manolix.
For a starter we are brought three dishes to share. The first one is spicy – tiger prawns cooked in white wine and garlic – not what you might have ordinarily expected but delicious nevertheless. The other two – oven baked feta cheese and skordalia (fried aubergines and courgettes in a thick tomato stew) are just as agreeable.
Manuel – sorry Manolix – recommends a white wine called Makedonikos to accompany the meal. Although Greece isn’t known for its wines other than retsina, this one, semi-dry and light-bodied, is a good companion for seafood dishes and goes well with the gingery piquancy of the prawns.
As for the mains, we are served first with a grilled dorada fish. Dorada (gilt head in English) isn’t a common fish ‘up north’ but is one of the main staples of Mediterranean people due to its wide availability, its tasty fleshiness and lack of small bones. As a second main we are presented with kleftiko – a lamb and feta pie that was originally devised by sheep-stealing guerrilla fighters in the war of independence against the Ottoman Turks. The fighters would rustle the sheep and cook the meat in underground ‘ovens’, often wrapped in lambskin. The pie is hearty and meaty and flavoured delicately with herbs.
After this Olympian feast there wasn’t much room left for more food but it was impossible to turn down a first-rate dish of brandied figs served in caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. This was followed by a Greek coffee – thankfully tasting unlike the real Greek coffee I once had in Athens.
The last customers had gone and it was time to leave – but Manolix thought otherwise. He turned the sign on the door to ‘closed’. ‘Now we will drink Ouzo,’ he stated with unassailable conviction. And so we did. As the evening wore on and the contents of the fiery aniseed water bottle dwindled and the continuous-play bouzouki tape trundled on, I said that I hoped the forthcoming article would attract more custom. ‘More customers?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘That’s the last thing I need – don’t you think I’m busy enough?’
It’s nice to know that there’s at least one happy restaurateur out there in these lean times.
Jason Heppenstall
