Myrtos

French order, Greek memory

The plate is considered before it leaves the pass. Asimakis Chaniotis, Chef at Myrtos in South Kensington, London, builds that decision into the work: Greek memory held in place by French technique, with hospitality treated as part of the mise en place rather than a greeting added at the door. His route to this room began in Athens and ran through London kitchens, including sous-chef work and an Executive Chef post at Pied à Terre, where repetition, timing and composure became daily tools. Since 2025, Myrtos has been his more personal station, a restaurant shaped around Ionian reference, philoxenia and a refusal to loosen Greek cooking from its source for the sake of easier adaptation. The lineage he states is not a single named mentor, but a discipline: classical training as structure, Greek food as identity, the hand as the point where both have to agree.

Share plates with a fresh fish counter

The program works in the register of modern Greek cooking: a la carte, small plates, bread, dips, fish, lamb, vegetable dishes, sweets and a curated wine program. Chaniotis uses familiar forms without flattening them. Lamb moussaka carries minced lamb, aubergine, potato and bechamel; whipped taramasalata brings smoked cod roe, trout roe and dill oil; dolmadakia come with avgolemono and wild fennel. The fish counter keeps the room close to the ingredient, with sea bass ceviche, grilled octopus, pink bream and salt-baked seabass among the dishes that have defined the opening year. There is also the more particular London-Greek line: snail flatbread with Metsovone cheese and Dorset snails, lobster giouvetsi with orzo, mussels, tomato, lemon and basil, portokalopita soaked in orange syrup. His visual habit matters here. Chaniotis has said he likes to see the finished dish before it is made; at Myrtos, that means presentation belongs to hospitality, not surface polish.

The room stays close to the counter

The room has a bright coastal register: Mediterranean materials, polished surfaces, a softness that keeps conversation at the table rather than pushing it into performance. It is elegant without becoming stiff. The counter and the pass keep the kitchen visible enough for the craft to stay present, and Chaniotis is known here for greeting guests, serving and explaining dishes himself. That detail changes the tempo. A plate of lamb chops or grilled octopus arrives not as an anonymous course, but as part of a continuing exchange between kitchen and room. Philoxenia is doing practical work.

A personal restaurant, still in motion

Myrtos is young enough that the program still feels close to its founding pressure. The restaurant opened around 2025 with Chaniotis at the center, and the strongest through-line is not novelty, but control: Greek dishes held to recognizable form, then tightened through the habits of a London fine-dining kitchen. If the next chapter is visible anywhere, it is at the pass and the fish counter, where sea bass ceviche, moussaka, lamb chops and grilled octopus continue to define Myrtos.