M-Eating, Mykonos (old town)

Old towns - every resort town has one. They seem to vary only in where they sit on their own little hideous-quaint spectrum, and whether it's gold, silver, leather or all three that every single shop is somehow staying open by selling. In Mykonos Old Town, it's "all of the above", and they're basically there to provide street lighting.It's fine. This stuff is here so you can get off a cruise ship and buy an "ethnic" skirt without actually having to walk too far. It serves a purpose, I'm part of the problem too, and you know, it is kind of nice to be able to see where you're going while you try to find a restaurant.Unsurprisingly, I didn't have high hopes for food in Mykonos. We passed one identikit fish restaurant where the crayfish in the tank full of murky water outside actually managed to look sad. Granted they weren't in a barrel, but laying into resort food is a little like taking shots at one of them anyway, so I'll just talk about a place that was superb instead.M Eating is a bistro on a little terrace in the old town. There's a small indoor restaurant and a large terrace on the veranda, canopied with vines. It's all distressed white wood tables and pale colours, toning in with the "Cycladic" style of the town. The menu is simple, and in the broad genre of "European restaurant food, somewhat fancy". It's bloody tasty, too.I started with "onion pies" (the menu translation could do with a little work, but hey, their English is orders of magnitude better than my Greek) that emerged to be very like light delicate miniature spanakopita, in little twisted filo pastry parcels. There were two, although one would have been ample, served with a few leaves to garnish, and a piquant red pepper sauce. The parcels themselves were light with the onus very much on the softened onion - there was no spinach here. The cheese wasn't feta, but tyrovila, which I hadn't heard of. It's gentler and less sour. The dill was just a faint trace, rather than the overpowering herby blast you can too often find. They were delightful.Kit's trio of dips and bread were well executed, although there's not much to be said here. Except perhaps to remark on the Fava. This is a yellow split pea affair, somewhere between dal and hummus - thick and satisfying and lightly spiced. It wasn't to Kit's taste, but they'd done it really rather well. Kevin, the third of our party had a polished but unremarkable potato salad.The mains were where M Eating really impressed me. I had roast pork fillet stuffed with smoked cheese, served with a fig syrup, wild rice, and a rich jus. Kit ate sea bass with a lemon sauce and vegetable puree, Kevin a lamb cutlet with a tomato crust, and I'm afraid I didn't catch the vegetables. I was too busy enthusing about the balance of the smoked cheese with the juicy roast pork and the figs.They'd got their gastro-wank on a little bit, and served both the fig syrup and a reduced, savoury stock for the lamb in little pipettes. This at once put my back up, and really worked as a presentational touch. Practically, it allowed you to squirt a little of the fruit in with the smoked cheese, and play with the balance on the plate. I'm calling it a hit.The richness of the pork and the salty smoky edge of the cheese work well together of course. But the fig syrup really ties it together, and takes away any potentially overpowering saltiness. The whole thing was presented on a little leaf of baked, sesame crusted filo which I initially took for a pure garnishing device. But actually, the sesame tones in with the nuttiness of the wild rice, and the filo soaks up meat juices, cheese, jus, and fig, making it a delightful morsel across the course of the meal. This is a very well thought-out dish.In fact, that would be my main general observation about M-Eating - the menu design is excellent, and things that could have been over-worked visual flourishes have actually been deployed neatly in service of taste and experience.This is not the cheapest place to eat in Mykonos, but it's miles away from taking the piss (about £15-25 for a main course), and it reviews well on the usual sites, so I'd recommend booking. We got lucky and happened to be out a bit early, which meant we were able to walk in. But we were the last to do so, and I didn't spot another unreserved table.