Zylia

Zylia is a Greek-Cypriot taverna on Bedford Street, tucked beside the Arcade food hall but run as its own address with its own entrance. It comes from Nick Molyviatis, the Athens-born former head chef at Kiln and co-owner of Singburi, working alongside Barry Karacostas, whose Cypriot family recipes shape the other half of the menu. Charcoal grilling sits at the centre of the kitchen, from souvlaki and sheftalia to whole fish and slow-cooked kleftiko.

The room occupies part of a Renaissance-style building raised in the 1870s as a department store, and keeps its original scale — high ceilings and arched windows, softened with whitewashed walls and rattan pendant shades. A run of shelving above the banquettes holds stoneware urns, dried flowers and family photographs. A marble-topped bar runs the length of one wall, hung with wine glasses, opening onto a dining room of cane-backed chairs and green velvet seating. It reads as lived-in rather than styled, and fills fast: reviewers have called it buzzy bordering on rowdy at full tilt.

The whole restaurant seats around fifty, including a handful at the kitchen counter, and takes full and partial buyouts rather than offering a separate private room. As part of the wider Arcade Covent Garden site, private hire enquiries are handled by Arcade's own events desk rather than a line specific to Zylia.