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Paphos, Restaurant review: Laledes Restaurant, Reviews

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Delightful food from a dedicated chef at Laledes (Photo Barri Allington)

If this review was solely to make sure this restaurant was full and therefore stayed in business, then what we might find ourselves redundant for Laledes is the sort of place serving the sort of food that makes me want to knock on the doors of my more enlightened neighbours and tell them to get on down to Kouklia and try it for themselves. Yes, it’s that good. 

Here we can experience some of the tastiest dishes I have eaten in a long time, in a relaxed, very friendly, elbows-on-table style. Nobody here will bore one rigid trying to explain the ‘concept’ of their menu, they won’t keep interrupting your conversation to ask with a rictus grin how everything is. They just look after you, and offer you food which is not over elaborated, just smart, technically brilliant cooking, exercised in the interests of lovely local ingredients.

It began with a dish of prawns that nestled (unusually) within a lightly seasoned coating of omelette, delivering an instant burst of flavours, with none of them fighting each other. This was a starter dish that displayed an immense suppleness and really showed the credentials of chef Doros Nearchou as it takes a very confident cook to know not to over punch when working with ingredients as delicate as these. 

This is the time of year when ones meat has to come with a bit of bone and fat, the bone to nourish the meat and its liquor as it cooks, the fat to thicken and enrich the gravy and as a main dish Doros presented us with a perfectly cooked shank of meat, but not lamb which has been over the past years so subject to the ups and downs of fashion it probably thinks its a skirt. Here we were presented with a pork shank, rich in meat and a hearty supper with plenty of body to ward of the cool of a November evening.

We had asked when we sat down for the chef’s recommendation, leaving it up to Doros to feed us, something so many people seem fearful of trying when they go out to eat, but at Laledes you will not only end up with a ‘star dish’ you will so delight chef Doros that he will leave his kitchen, come upstairs and embrace you in front of everyone and so declare undying (purely culinary) love for you as a valued diner. 

Laledes acts as the stage for this man’s wholly confident cooking where his experience honed in star-rated establishments such as the Dorchester in London, the Annabelle in Paphos and Anassa Hotel in Latchi marks him out as someone really special, and good enough to run his own ‘little star’ establishment albeit its tucked down a little side street just off the village square in Kouklia.

For those nervous of going ‘off piste’ the set menu offers simple yet perfectly balanced Mediterranean style dishes that will tempt both meat, fish and vegetarian diners, plus Doros holds a degree as a master bread maker, and a claim to fame that he helped give pointers to the TV baker Paul Hollywood when they both worked together at the Annabelle Hotel in the nineties. So, anyone wishing gluten free home made bread it’s always on the menu, as are a range of his other flavoured breads. We used ours to help clear a bowl of his homemade taramoslata which was creamy, rich and not at all vinegary, not forgetting his Tsatziki which is excellent but quite garlicy.

Style wise Laledes has the kind of character which money and expensive interior designers can’t buy - the upper room of what used to be a family home is a celebration of an enthusiastic collector of artefacts, all collected by Doros from a young age, having been carefully stored away in his mother’s shed ready for the day when he opened his own restaurant. 

This is a man with a very fixed idea on what he wants to achieve as a purveyor of quality food, a chef with both adventure in his bones and a passion for food which even as a full blooded Cypriot, Doros (dare I say it?) would, if he had to, choose over sex. A real sign of his pure love of cooking. 

VITAL STATISTICS

SPECIALITY Mediterranean

WHERE Laledes Restaurant, Kouklia village, Paphos 

CONTACT 26 4322330, info@laledes.com 

PRICE from €10-20