Restaurant Review: Perama, Petersham

Pork belly baklava, the dish of the evening

On Friday night I went to Perama in Petersahm with friends Amy, Betty, Maria, John and assorted partners (not mine before mum begins to think there is something I haven't told her!).

We started the evening with a drink in the Cockatoo Hotel where we were offered tickets in a seafood raffle. If it was a meat raffle I wouldn't have been able to resist on the basis of ticking off a quintessential Aussie experience. Did UK pubs ever have meat raffles?

Petersham is known for its' Portuguese restaurants, so I had wondered why we were going to eat Greek food. However, it was AMAZING. The best evenings are the ones that take you by surprise and exceed your expectations and this was certainly one of those.

As we entered the restaurant you could sense an effortless family atmosphere. I suspect most of the customers are regulars and it's not hard to see why. We opted for the $50 banquet which turned out to be stunning value, especially considering most main courses on the menu are around $30. My experience of set menus / banquets is that you often get fobbed off with smaller portions or cheaper dishes. There wasn't a hint of that here as enormous quantities of food kept rolling out of the kitchen. They were also very accommodating of the vegetarian in our group. A mistake in the kitchen resulted in an extra dish being brought to our table and we got two additional deserts.

The starters / appetisers make Perama sounds like any other Greek restaurant with assorted dips, pickled vegetables, filo parcels, vine leaves and a Greek salad arriving at our table. They definitely weren't ordinary with interesting seasoning part of every dish and beautiful feta in the salad. Have you ever had warmed vine leaves with a creme sauce? You should.

The only downside of the evening is that I now want a new camera lens.

The food then got evening better with a series of more substantial dishes appearing. We had some gorgeous fried squid and dried prawns. (So good that it was all gone by the time I took a photograph.) Fantastic lamb skaras, that melted in your mouth and had a wonderfully rich and smokey flavour.

We also had pork belly baklava that was my dish of the evening. Sweet, savoury, soft, cinamon flavoured and crunchy all at the same time. Truly innovative food.

The aftermath

We were all groaning by the time desert arrived, but couldn't resist the baklava ice cream and sumptuous rice pudding. The rice pudding was a delight.

I think you'd struggle to find a better restaurant in Sydney for groups than the Perama banquet menu.