Mercifully Cyprus is not a country with a strong canapé-nibbling culture, we don’t get terrifically excited when faced with delicate but utterly pointless confections on sticks. What’s really demanded when dining out are ‘proper’ meals, tables loaded with dishes weighed down with meat, pastries, dips, bread and salads.
Chef Andrew Clay works abroad in the employ of an American millionaire as the family’s personal chef and over the years he has risen to the challenge of cooking for his globe-trotting employer and his guests. He has cooked in the Australian outback, on safari in Africa, he has barbequed, baked and marinated on beaches, jungles and ski slopes. With consummate ease, this chef can rustle up a lavish sit down banquet for a president by night, then come morning offer the best Eggs Benedict and Bloody Mary’s to satisfy the needs of folk like Richard Branson or an appreciative Rolling Stone. A serious love of food finds him, when home for a few weeks, visiting friends who run their own tavernas and restaurants. It was during a recent visit to the Hondros Tavern the idea of creating a spit roast Sunday lunch came about, aimed at showing how good this form of cooking can be when in the hands of an expert.
Spit roasting is a serious culinary art form, with rather more to it than just ramming meat on a spike and chucking a few shavings of oregano and half a kilo of olive oil it. Andrew can and does spit roast almost any form of meat, fish or fowl, meaning he follows a noble tradition set during Tudor times when this form of cooking food was enjoyed on a daily basis.
Only royalty could ever afford this form of cooking as the horrendous cost of keeping a wood fire going for 11 hours a day to spit roast everything from peacocks, oxen, deer, even the odd dolphin meant mere ordinary mortals could never aspire to sampling this luxurious form of cuisine. Nor would they have been able to spare a worker to stand constantly by the spit ensuring the meat was basted as they slowly turned by hand using a crank handle. These days we may have motorised rotisseries which can give a good imitation of doing the job, but until now I have rarely tasted meat as tender, juicy, and full of flavour as those cooked over a proper hand-made open-air spit roast pit.
So pass the front of Hondros Tavern on a Sunday morning and the sweet scent of roasting meat, herbs and marinades literally fills the air. The chicken, pork, beef and lamb are impaled at 8:30am and many will find it curious to watch from the road as throughout the cooking process Andrew can be seen wielding a heavy weight syringe with which he regularly injects the chicken with his homemade marinade of rosemary, garlic, lemon, coriander and onions. His beef is similarly plied with liquidised cilantro, thyme and olive oil, the pork gets the apple, onion, celery along with a cooked down chicken stock therapy. Lamb is treated to regular rosemary and mint injections, in addition he uses hickory smoked salt plus special dried herbs so the scents that emanate from his roasts are truly glorious.
The pit is fuelled by lemon tree wood which is an expensive option as its got to be sufficient to keep the coals going for around four to six hours but the whole experience is well worth being doused in lemon smoke as you sit outside in the garden area of the restaurant and tuck into platters of each of the meats plus plates of potatoes and sauces. There is a set price between €13 and €15 depending on the selection of meat ordered.
If you do not feel able to attack such a mountain of protein there is the option of a delicious ‘bun job’ where Andrew fills a large roll with a generous portion of beef, lamb, chicken of pork along with homemade pickled cucumbers and balsamic/sumac sauce.
The sole drawback to this venture is its consistency as without the expert roaster this delectable Sunday lunch would become just another dried up meat-fest, so those customers wishing to partake in this Tudor/Paphos revival of spit roasting at its very best will have to telephone Hondros Tavern first and find out if Andrew is indeed roasting on a particular Sunday, and even if you have to wait a couple of weeks until he returns from the USA believe me its well worth it.
VITAL STATISTICS
SPECIALITY Spit roasted meats
WHERE Apostolou Pavlou (next to the big car park leading to the harbour)
CONTACT 26 934256
PRICE Spit Roast €13-€15. Filled rolls €4
