Mamakas Taverna

The Lavraki arrives whole — a pound-and-a-half of grilled Aegean sea bass dressed with Santorini capers — and it says most of what Mamakas Taverna is about before another plate reaches the table. This is a modern Greek taverna on Ossington built around the Aegean: cuisine shaped, in the restaurant's own framing, by sun, sea, soil, and culinary methods handed down through generations. The menu reads less like a survey of Greek standards than a settled point of view about where the food comes from and how close it stays to its sources.

That outlook is easiest to read across the plates. Oktapodi pairs grilled Mediterranean octopus with P.D.O. Santorini fava and pickled onions; Kokinisto braises beef cheek with orzo, cinnamon, tomato, and mizithra under sourdough crumbs; Laimos Arniou is Ontario grass-fed lamb neck given a twenty-four-hour roast with sage and rosemary. The anchors a Greek menu is expected to carry are here too — a layered Moussaka, grilled Paidakia lamb chops with bulgur and tzatziki — alongside mezes built for grazing: spanakopita finished with honey, beef Keftedes with tahini yogurt and pine nuts, and a choice of house dips running from tzatziki to taramosalata to tirokafteri. Seafood gets its own attention beyond the whole fish, from a Shrimp Saganaki of wild Argentinian prawns in tomato and feta to a Lavraki tartare with pistachio and tarragon, while the vegetable cooking is no afterthought — Imam Bayildi's grilled eggplant with walnut pesto, a roasted-cabbage Lahano finished with saffron avgolemono and Greek oak honey. Dessert holds the line, from Loukoumades me Karydia in Greek oak honey to a baklava cheesecake layered with pistachio, hazelnut, and phyllo.