I have to admit that not having heard of this chain of restaurant’s (and not even knowing it was part of a chain until after), I had no idea what to expect. The Real Greek Souvlaki & Bar claims to derive it’s style from Greek street food (although I couldn’t see a gyros on the menu) and the cheap metallic chairs & tables certainly belonged on the streets of Greece. 

The bright lights in addition to the cheap furniture gave it an atmosphere which felt like a cross between a TV studio and school canteen, which wasn’t that pleasant at all. I really started to get worried when the waitress started to explain that the pictures depicting the food in the menu were not representative of the size of portions we would receive; “The flat breads is not big pile flatbreads. Is 4 bits cut for triangles” and “The Crevettes is only 3, not  big pile”. However, I guess you could say that them having to do this is more a reflection on the type of people that have frequented the place previously, rather than bad waitressing.

The meze/starter options had some surprisingly interesting options, as well as the usual dolmades and taramasalata etc. We went for the greek flat bread and the Santorinian Fava bean dip plus a portion of Tiropitakia (feta, spinach & leek in triangles of filo pastry). The bread was fresh and hot, with the fava bean dip & tiropitakia quite tasty.

We all went for mains of lamb souvlaki (grilled lamb served in a flat bread), each served with a side salad. The souvlaki was fine, until I bit into a piece of gristle on one of the pieces of lamb, which wasn’t nice at all. The salad was simple and fresh, with feta, olives, tomatoes and onion.

The Real Greek does do some nice food, but for me seems to only be one (small) step up from a kebab shop, with pretentions to be much more than that. I do like the idea of souvlaki and would love to see kebab shops serving these wraps (although they probably won’t if this is a Greek dish, considering most kebab shops are Turkish). In fact, I recall a couple of kebab shops in Nottingham serve shish kebabs in freshly made nan bread, which were phenomenal. I guess the style of food and experience must be at least fairly popular, considering it’s a chain, but I don’t see that much of an appeal, myself. I’m sure that local Greek restaurants are not that much more expensive and undoubtedly have a better atmosphere and better food too, probably. Overall, the thumbs down from me.