Paris Demetriades
Without a doubt, the most moving moment of this year’s Wiz 50 Best Restaurants, rightly earning the warmest applause from the audience, was the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement award to “Evroulla’s restaurant.”
A traditional Cypriot eatery located on Onasagorou Street, in the heart of walled Nicosia, which for decades has been offering fresh, home-cooked food on a daily basis. Through the quality and unpretentiousness that define it, it satisfies everyone who, whether regulars or passers-by, is fortunate enough to visit and enjoy the delicious dishes of Mrs. Evroulla.
But what is the story behind this popular eatery? According to Mrs. Evroulla Ioannou herself, the restaurant counts four decades of life, as she settled in the area with her husband and children in 1986, when she was 26 years old.
The center of Nicosia at the time, Mrs. Evroulla recalls, was bustling, with many shops and businesses and a very different atmosphere. “When we first came, the café was tiny, with just a single charcoal brazier for souvlaki.” Over time, she notes, after realizing that the neighborhood was looking for home-cooked food, she decided to expand her restaurant’s menu, offering—beyond grilled dishes—traditional meals such as stuffed vegetables, kolokasi (taro), and pastitsio.
“The atmosphere back then was very relaxed and simple. To give you an idea, quite a few customers would bring their plate back themselves. Completely family-like,” she remembers.
Around 2000, the eatery became firmly established, with the result that Mrs. Evroulla knew exactly, as she notes, how many portions of food she needed to prepare on a daily basis. “To this day I have people who may have been coming here for twenty years and eating here every day,” while from time to time the eatery “has been visited by many well-known artists such as Dalaras, Papakonstantinou, and Zouganelli.”
Lellos was the only mayor of Nicosia who never came to the eatery, she notes; all the other mayors have visited her repeatedly, often bringing distinguished guests with them.
“Excuse me, I can hear my food”
Interrupting the filming for a moment with a memorable, spontaneous line, that she can “hear the food cooking”, Mrs. Evroulla admits that although she has grown tired, she “doesn’t have the heart” to leave the eatery.
“Others complain that they don’t have work, and I, who have so much work, am supposed to leave it? I’m sorry,” she says, while at the same time expressing her wish that her son will continue running the eatery, which rightly constitutes a place name and a point of reference for the walled city.
“I can’t do without this place,” she says in the wonderful video produced by the Wiz team as part of this year’s awards for the 50 best restaurants in Cyprus.
