TwentyFive: A New Destination for Steaks in Mikrolimano

Located right next door to Varoulko in Mikrolimano, TwentyFive is the latest addition to the area’s lively dining scene. Its warm interior—exposed brick, timber, leather accents, and the glow of flames from the open kitchen—sets a relaxed yet stylish tone, further enhanced by attentive service (even if a touch slow at times). While the weather holds, the outdoor pavilion offers charming sea views, though the experience is occasionally disrupted by the steady traffic on the coastal road, often featuring loud engine revs and music blasting from passing cars.


 
Chef Giorgos Tsoulis, known for his stints in various kitchens as well as his popularity on television, has teamed up with Alec Peters, power forward for Olympiacos (whose jersey number, 25, inspired the restaurant’s name), along with another member of the basketball team’s staff. With a well-known chef and the Olympiacos connection behind it, TwentyFive made a strong debut when it opened this past April. It’s a stylish, thoughtfully put-together restaurant offering fair prices, an appealing menu, and a concise yet well-curated wine list with a pleasing variety of options.

George Tsoulis’s cooking shows just the right amount of creativity for a restaurant of this kind, and the menu is very well structured, full of ideas that are sure to appeal to any meat lover. But this is also where the first caveats emerge. The kitchen needs to pay closer attention to the quality of ingredients, which sometimes undermine otherwise good ideas — as in the case of the sausage served on brioche with fermented ketchup, pickled coleslaw and raspberry mustard, or the well-conceived tomato salad with Andros wine cheese, which simply doesn’t work without a truly ripe tomato. A bit more restraint would also help in some dishes. The tartare, for instance, while flavoursome, loses the integrity of the meat beneath the heavy seasoning. And even in the carefully grilled meats on the parrilla, the addition of beurre noisette sauce feels oddly misplaced. Finally, in a restaurant centred on meat, the chips and mashed potato ought to be exceptional — but at TwentyFive, they fall short.

Finally, the dish I was most curious to try was the «25» Signature Wellington, made with handmade kourou pastry, a mushroom filling with veal sweetbreads, truffle oil (as I’ve said before, any restaurant with serious gastronomic ambitions should really let that go), beef fillet and tarragon sauce. A clever and ambitious idea which, if it had simply been called “Our Meat Pie,” I’d only fault for the pastry being too thick in proportion to the rest of the ingredients. But when you call something a Wellington, it demands a whole beef fillet — the undisputed star of the plate in flavour, texture and bite — and here, that expectation wasn’t fulfilled.



TwentyFive is ambitious, engaging and already successful — what it now needs is for Giorgos Tsoulis to pause, tune into the restaurant’s needs, look more deeply into the quality of his ingredients, and consider whether — and how — his dishes might benefit from being a little simpler and more focused.