This recently opened north London Greek serves okay-to-good dishes at fair prices in a modern, relaxing setting. It just needs to sort a couple of nonsensicalities to stand out amid Upper Street’s crowded dining scene.

The Venue
Upper Street is a trendy, busy, North London thoroughfare awash with high end clothing, kitchen and gift shops, plus bars of both the coffee and alcoholic variety. Head north from Angel Tube and you will also be spoilt for choice with dining possibilities, including upmarket burgers, Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern, modern European and more. Throwing its hat into this crowded ring in autumn 2008 is Pomegranate, a good-looking, modern room decorated in greys with splashes of red, polished floorboards, simple wooden chairs, clothless tables with paper napkins, and a bar and open kitchen towards the rear. The floor-to-ceiling glass doors could be folded back on a sunny day, and there’s just room on the pavement for two couples to dine al fresco.

The Atmosphere
Young, relaxed, casual-but-smart locals form the bulk of the clientele. Staff are efficient and helpful but a few more smiles and some jolly banter wouldn’t go amiss. A CD of inoffensive RnB favourites plays at a tolerable level. The menu makes it clear that you are welcome to order however much you feel like eating, so it’s a useful place to know.

The Food
Pomegranate’s menu promises Greek fusion cuisine and authentic Greek dishes with a contemporary twist, but what’s fused or twisted about taramosalata, tabbouleh, humous (all £3.30), Greek salad (£3.60) or deep-fried calamari (£7.60)? The only item from more than 40 to justify these claims is the rather scary-sounding fusion rocket salad with pomegranate molasses (£3.60). Removing it from the otherwise classic Greek menu and cutting the verbiage would be a smart move.

The menu also proclaims: There are no starters or main courses. You order as many dishes as you like depending on whether you want a snack, a main meal or a feast. This would be fine – tapas-style eating is spreading into countless cuisines – if the menu didn’t very clearly contain different sized dishes. All the constituents of a classic meze are there, but so are whole Dover sole, sirloin and fillet steak, and veal chop, plus sides of rice or chips. Staff even suggest you order a couple of the meze-type items plus one more substantial dish per person, a classic starter/main combo if ever there were one.

Starters, which arrive with warm pitta, are variable: tzatziki (£3.30) is more yoghurt than cucumber and not particularly minty, although a good kick of garlic comes through now and then. Koukia (broad beans, mint, olive oil, £3.30) could be zingier with more dressing. Haloumi (£3.90) is tasty, but then it’s hard to go wrong with grilled cheese. Pick of the bunch is kioftedes (£3.80): the fried lamb meatballs are impeccably light and crisp, with a moreish, meaty flavour.

The Mediterranean way of eating is a relaxed, laidback experience, the menu trills, but that’s hard to achieve when you know the main courses could arrive at any moment (Each dish will be cooked to perfection and served when ready, we also learn). Sure enough, when the meze is only half-eaten, grilled sea bass (£12) and lamb cutlets (£9.40) show up with sides of chips (£2.90) and rice (£2.40). What to do: abandon the broad beans and lamb balls? Carry on and leave the fish and meat to go cold? Combine everything on the plate?

The whole sea bass is a fine specimen. Served perfectly plain except for grilled tomatoes, lemon wedges and superfluous shredded onion, its flesh is moist and its skin winningly scorched and crisped. The accompanying chips could be crunchier. The lamb comprises four juicy, tasty cutlets, again served quite plain. The rice is perfectly cooked but lukewarm by the time diners have wondered how to deal with the two colliding courses now filling the table.

Thankfully, desserts are ordered separately and subsequently. There’s yoghurt, walnut and honey; Greek pastries; cold Greek rice pudding; cheesecake; and a decent creme caramel (all £3). Three scoops of ice cream cost £3.50 and, along with the usual chocolate and vanilla, are the intriguing flavours of apple, rose and – perhaps inevitably – pomegranate. The apple, with its green apply tang, works best, whilst the perfumed quality of the rose is odd but in a good way. The pomegranate is least successful, tasting very like vanilla. It’s a difficult portion to finish as all three are massively rich: less double cream and more milk in the mix would work wonders.

The Drink
There is a short, globetrotting wine list of nine whites, nine reds and two roses. Only the house white and red (both £11.90, and described respectively only as a crisp, dry white with balanced fruit and floral notes and spicy and fruity aromas with a rich palate, so no clues as to their provenance or grape varieties) are available by the glass (£3.30). The priciest bottle is Chateau Plaisance St Emilion GC at a modest £25.50, although you could splash out on Laurent Perrier Rose fizz at £58. There are two bottled beers, one dessert wine by the glass, and spirits and liqueurs, all at reasonable prices. As one might expect at such an establishment, Greek coffee (£1.95) and fresh mint tea (£1.80) appear amid the usual after-dinner hot drinks.

The Last Word
With plenty of passing trade and an inviting look to it, Pomegranate will no doubt grab its share of Upper Street’s diners. And so it should, for everything that comes to the table is perfectly acceptable, and some of it is very good. The problem is how it arrives: Pomegranate should either fully embrace the meze/tapas concept (so the sea bass would arrive as a modest fillet at half the price, and there would be three small lamb chops instead of four hefty ones) or divide the menu up into starters and mains. They should also be proud to serve the classic dishes of Greece and remove the unsubstantiated and unwelcome references to fusion and contemporary twists from the menu.

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