Greek Delight - Greek Restaurant, Mosfilo, For Great Lemon Chicken in Hatch End

If you want a jolly night out, large filling portions and friendly staff, Mosfilo is a good place to go. Of the four of us (two couples) who dined there at the weekend, three of us had already checked out the website and chosen our preferred food and wine.

I had checked in advance for several reasons. I don't want to be missing conversation whilst checking the menu, nor keeping people waiting to order whilst I read every word on every page. Nor do I want to be rushed to choose and missing out on the daily special or some unusual dish I had not noticed.

Website Wine and Drink Choices
I also want to know the desserts and dessert wines, and all the wines available by the glass, the sparking wine such as Prosecco, the rose wine, the dessert wine to go with dessert, before I commit to sharing a bottle of red or white, or bing rushed into a glass of white when I could have tried a cocktail.

Picking Prosecco and Price
I want to know whether I can have a glass of Prosecco. I also like to know prices. In some places a double espresso is twice the price as well as twice the calories, and the kir royale doubles the price of a kir, or a bottle of wine is good value compared to the individual glasses. At other places you see really interesting wines, and would like a glass, because nobody else wants that style or is willing to pay the price of a bottle. Yet at other restaurants you can have a double espresso instead of a single for hardly any more money. Bag a bargain.

Mosfilo's Menu
Browsing Mosfilo's menu page in advance, I spotted that I could have a reasonably priced sweet dessert wine, and / or glass of Prosecco. A glass of rose sparkling was at no higher price than alternative drinks. I noted a couple of cocktails, - if I'd allowed more time I could have checked the ingredients. Lastly, as an alternative to the usual varieties of tea or coffee, you could have a mint tea.

I also looked at the desserts. I could cut down on a starter, or not finish my main course, to leave tummy room and time to enjoy a dessert. I could go Greek, and try their baklava. I do like nuts and syrup, and any kind of pastry, and baklava is my favourite. Alternatively, I could stick to cheesecake. But it's harder for me to find baklava than cheesecake, so my choice would be baklava.

Lemon Chicken
I ordered the lemon chicken and it was wonderful. I haven't had a real lemon chicken for years. This was lemon juice, I presume in butter, with real lemon on the side. It came with risotto which was perfect for smoking up the flavour. So many restaurants, especially Chinese ones, serve strips of chicken in batter, and a glooey, gelatinous gravy (which I had recently in Hong Kong, even in high class and high price restaurants. I was really pleased with my lemon chicken.

Now I come to think of it, surely I, or we, could make lemon chicken at home. How hard can it be. Lemon juice and butter. But do you have to avoid lemon juice curdling the butter. I asked the best cook in my family. He said that butter is just fat. It is solid. Only milk curdles. We'll try it, inspired by the success of the lemon chicken in Mosfilo.

(Yes, you can buy both cheesecake and baklava in many London supermarkets, and other supermarkets worldwide.)

Wine from Greece, N a o u s s a - sorry the autocorrect kept changing this to Naomi, but that's a good reminder of how to remember the name. N a o u s s i is the top region of Greek wine. We had a bottle of red. The grape is Xinomavro not to be confused with the Mavro grape from Cyprus.

The bottle was from 2010, a good year in Europe. Vintage is not so important in warm countries where they get ripeness every year, sometimes a long season, usually with long days, further south. All four of us drank it, not in equal measures (with one driver), but we finished the bottle and all were happy with it.

The Mosfilo menu told me something else new. I knew they were connected to Sea Pebbles, a Favourite in the centre of Hatch End for years. But the owners also have a connection, a half share they said, in Orama just along the road in the other direction from Sea Pebbles.

We had booked a table. We were shown to a table at the front near two large groups. Why are large groups noisy? Is it because they are having a good time? Celebrating special occasions? Shouting over each other? Have had lots to drink? Know people at the other end of the table and want to share jokes and joy with others further along? Apart from the noise, a smaller group tends to feel short of friends. No problem in changing tables.

We moved to a table at the back, away from two larger parties. The decor reflects noise. Once we were at the back it was much better. You would not have noise if you went on a quieter weekday at lunch time. But if you like a crowd and conviviality, a busier Saturday night would be just right.

Finally, when the time came to pay our bill, we were given a cube of Greek delight. The pink one has s subtle rose flavour.

Mosfilo, Greek Kouzina, 308 Uxbridge Road, Hatch End, Middlesex HA5 4HR
tel: 020 8421 6821
www.mosfilo.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer sand photographer, author and speaker.