Avant Garden is a fine-dining restaurant in Ermoupoli on Syros, in a restored neoclassical mansion of 1830, opposite the Apollo Theatre. Konstantinos Bourantas, chef-owner, sets refined European technique against Cycladic ingredients and flavours. Dinner is served in the mansion’s interior courtyard, walled in stone on every side and planted with climbers. The address is Vardaka Square, Ermoupoli, Syros, and the restaurant serves dinner only, Monday to Saturday, 18:30 to 23:30.
The mansion stands in the centre of the town, with the theatre facing it across the square. Much of what the carte holds is grown or caught nearby, the rest is international, and the whole of it is rewritten as the seasons turn. Behind it the cellar runs to more than 70 labels, mainly Greek.
What the kitchen cooks
The starters are where the Cycladic produce shows plainest, and most are built from four or five components with nothing hidden. A tomato salad arrives with basil and petroti cheese. Courgette and squash come with sheep’s yoghurt, buckwheat and fresh cheese. Cuttlefish is set against fava, the yellow split pea purée of the Aegean, with capers, cherry tomatoes, kiwi, almonds and spicy salami. Home-smoked salmon has beetroot, smoked walnuts and a vinegar made from amarena sour cherries. A homemade pastrami comes with green beans, tomato, pistachio and rocket; Aegean tuna is a separate plate, a spicy salad with salicorne, daikon, cucumber, green apple, chilli and sesame. The longest reach on the list is pigeon, served as a pastilla, wrapped in thin pastry, with raisins and onion.
The main courses carry the European half of the premise, and Greek cheese does a good deal of the work in them: kariki in a risotto with nectarine and lavender, matured gruyère from Milos in tagliolini with pumpkin seed oil, capers, herbs and pine nuts. The fish and the meat are plainer in their framing and longer in their construction. A ravioli is made in the house with rockfish, bouillabaisse, the fish soup of Marseille, and rouille. Codfish has potato, sundried tomato, black garlic, bell pepper and spicy salami. Lamb comes two ways on one plate, a roll and a kebab, with chickpeas, tomato tagine, frumenty and yoghurt, and pork the same way, tenderloin and belly, with a kraut cabbage roll, black ale sauce, pickled mustard and quince. Beef fillet takes a celeriac and truffle mushroom terrine with sweetbreads, and rabbit takes carrot textures and chive oil.
The desserts stay short and lean on ices: an orange pie with ginger, coriander and lemongrass ice cream, a white chocolate waffle with speculoos and vanilla, a banana split, or a single scoop, rose petal loukoumi with meringue among them.
The wine
Two tastings sit beside the carte, both poured in the yard in the late afternoon, before the kitchen opens for dinner. The subject of both is local and Aegean wine. One pours five wine varieties from the terroir of Syros, an extended taste of the island’s own wineries. The other pours five Greek wines chosen across the country, a broader view of the Greek wine map.
Dinner at your own address
The kitchen also cooks at the guest’s own address. The chef builds a menu around their tastes, their dietary requirements and the kind of dinner they want, from a dinner for two to a gathering for family and friends. Where there are outdoor grilling facilities, he cooks over an open flame with local meat, fresh seafood and seasonal vegetables.
Who is this for
Dinner here suits a couple, or a party of four or six willing to give a whole evening to one table. It is a town evening: an enclosed garden off Vardaka Square, the theatre façade standing opposite, and Ermoupoli carrying on outside the walls. It suits a guest who likes the produce named on the plate, who will plan the night around one sitting, and who is content to let the kitchen choose what the season allows.
