Greek food is having a moment, but this 40-year-old city icon is an understated stayer

Sometime this year – the exact date is lost in a blur of bouzouki and baklava – it will be 40 years since Neofytos “Freddy” Tsindos opened his Greek restaurant on Lonsdale Street. Just about everything has changed in Melbourne since 1984, but there are some hold-outs: Punt Road traffic is always awful, friends continue to meet under the Flinders Street clocks and Freddy Tsindos still keeps his melitzanosalata (eggplant dip) recipe a closely guarded secret.

He’ll easily admit to the chargrilled eggplant, garlic, parsley, olive oil and salt, but he’s gleefully tight-lipped about the smidge of something else. No matter: I’ll just come back when the urge for smoky eggplant strikes.

It’s never a bad idea to head to Tsindos. The timeless, two-level restaurant has a pleasing, informal taverna feeling with timber furniture and rafters and details in Aegean azure.

A laneway dining corral hosts Greek musicians on Friday and Saturday nights and, if you’re hosting a bash, this unflappable institution is a perennial option with banquets ($70 per person) that roll from dips to dolmades to loukoumades. It makes group dining a cinch.

The appetiser platter.

The food is homely and honest. You’d be wise to start with an appetiser selection: a packed platter ($28 for two) of that eggplant enigma, plus tarama and tzatziki, marinated calamari and artichokes, a slab of feta and vinegared anchovies.

Fans of small fish will also want the excellent sardines ($23), flour-dusted, fried and daubed with a Santorini-style sauce that includes capers and chopped tomato.

The grilled calamari ($42) was fine – fresh, sweet, tender – but let down by accompanying skordalia (potato dip) that tasted bitter and sharp, like old garlic.

A slab of moussaka is an edible hug.

Much better was the moussaka ($32), a hearty slab of beef mince, eggplant and bechamel. If you could tray-bake a hug, this would surely be it.

Lamb and chicken are mainstays, both gyros carved from the spit and cubed meat sizzled as souvlaki. There are lavish platters, but I’m a fan of the relatively modest kalamaki ($36-$40), skewers served over rice which becomes flavoured by the meaty juices.

Vegetarians do well, not least because of the horta ($14), always a good option in Greek restaurants. This braise of boiled greens can be made with any foraged weeds; the mellow Tsindos rendition is a tangle of vlita (amaranth) jazzed with lemon.

Kalamaki (mixed skewers served over rice).

The menu has stayed remarkably consistent, a steady, oregano-scented centre while the neighbourhood has changed around it. Between the 1940s and late 1980s, this block of Lonsdale Street between Swanston and Russell streets was a thriving, Hellenic hub, busy with restaurants, cake shops and social clubs. It has slowly morphed into a more diverse strip of cocktail bars, bubble-tea shops and hotpot hangouts.

Freddy Tsindos, now 77, and his wife, Eleftheria, still visit the restaurant, but they passed the business on to their son, Harry, a decade ago. The staff do a good job, but few of them have any particular connection to Greek cuisine and eating here can feel merely like a decent meal, not a compelling cultural experience.

If you could tray-bake a hug, the moussaka would surely be it.

Elsewhere, Melbourne is experiencing something of a Greek food revival. To pick out three examples: Con Christopoulos’s Kafeneion has taken over Supper Club on Spring Street and made sweetbreads sexy and fun; Ermou Gyros does a version of contemporary Athenian street food in Richmond; and Capers is rocking next-gen snacks and cocktails in Thornbury.

Tsindos is important, not least because its founder connects us to Melbourne culinary history. Freddy arrived in Melbourne in 1965 and worked for his uncle, George Tsindos, who was part-owner of Florentino on Bourke Street, now stewarded by the Grossi family. Young Freddy worked in the kitchen and – as his English improved – the dining floor. He later worked at the RACV Club, where tasks included flambéing steak diane and crepes suzette.

The family opened an original Tsindos in 1970 – around the corner on Russell Street – before launching this place. In its heyday, the restaurant was a celebrity drawcard: the late George Michael and his mum came for baked artichokes; Cypriot tennis player Marcos Baghdatis adored the souvlaki; Mikis Theodorakis (soundtrack composer for 1964’s Zorba the Greek) swooned for the stuffed peppers.

Go-to dish: Yaourti (honey, yoghurt and walnut dessert).

The food they loved is the food served here today: straightforward and guileless. Take, for example, the yaourti ($15), a dessert of honey, yoghurt and walnuts. Any of us could pile these ingredients into a dish, but we wouldn’t find the glamour and glory in them: the luscious dairy dollops, the sticky blossom bouquet, the toasty nuts, all shimmering proudly in a glass goblet, as graspable and ineffable as a bygone era.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine