Galazia Akti

I have to be motivated on a hot Saturday night to set out from the northern suburbs all the way to Lagonisi. Motivation came in the form of, what else, a restaurant. Not just any restaurant but a small, very chic, very expensive, very good restaurant whose seats and tables are sprayed by the sea and whose kitchen is manned by Thanassis Roussas, the talented sous chef who works closely with his well-established boss, Yiannis Baxevannis, whose signature is on the menu. The restaurant: Galazia Akti at the very exclusive Lagonissi Resort.

Galazia Akti is small, a minute jewel of white and Aegean blue enhanced by the lights artfully placed under the water right at the restaurant’s edge. The menu is well thought out, with an interesting, unusual selection of starters, salads and main courses. At this hotel, where prices range start in the mid hundreds of euros for a room and go north from there to five figures, the prices for a meal appeal to those with deep-sea sized pockets. Starters range from 20 to 37 euros, main courses from 30 to 55. The wines are pricey.

Baxevannis’ love affair with fresh herbs is everywhere in evidence on the menu. Basil, citronella, marjoram, arbaroriza and more grace many dishes with subtle, ethereal flavors and perfumy aromas. The chefs show a particular fondness and imagination in the salad selection: sea urchin salad with seaweed and crayfish veloute comes served in a glass where various temperatures and textures jump around playfully on the palate. It was delicious. I liked the play on traditional Aegean fish pichti, here made with sfyrida, salmon and eel, and served with a medley of xinolahano, apples and celery. The red mullet in an orange crust was a very fine and delicate plate, served with roasted eggplant and herbs. One odd thing in this dish: the fish didn’t have that characteristic “muddy” flavor that is the trademark of the red mullet. I loved the seafood giouvetsi main course, which is a gentrified version of this homey Greek dish, but here presented beautifully. The fish on a crust of tea with asparagus-basil puree didn’t work for me, even though it sounded fascinating. The asparagus was fibrous, which gave the puree an unpleasant texture. The grouper with artichokes a la polita is a classic take on a classic dish, well-prepared, with surprisingly good tasting chokes, that made me wonder if the chef buys them in season and freezes them himself.

All said, we did have a really good meal here, wining and dining under the moonlight, lulled by the gentle slap of water against the shore. If there are a few comments to be made, from this nitpicker’s perspective, they have to do less with the food and more with a few details that seemed overlooked. Translations into English on the menu were sloppy. Louiza, for example, isn’t citronella but lemon verbena in English; kavourma isn’t pastrami (it doesn’t translate), xinogalo isn’t sour milk, which sounds singularly unappetizing in English, but buttermilk, and xinomyzithra is a far better cheese than the cottage cheese it is translated as and that most English speaking natives associate with a horrible diet food sold in plastic containers. If the chefs can convince their hotel-keeper landlords to fix a few of the rickety tables and to provide slightly better directions to this lovely place once inside the labyrinthine hotel complex then Galazia Akti will just be better. It’s already very, very good.

Cuisine: New Greek cooking by Yiannis Baxevannis and his talented sous chef Thanassis Roussos

Area: Lagonissi, one hour south of Athens along the coast

Decor: Kissed by the Sea

Service: Very attentive

Wine List, very good, very expensive

Prices 100 + euro per person without wines

Address: Grand Resort Lagonissi, 40th km Leoforos Athinon-Souniou, Tel. 2291076000