This review was published in August 2002

Andy's opened in 1968, and their trump card is the garden - the sign outside even styles the place as Andy's Garden Restaurant. To reach the garden you'll have to make your way through two long and fairly dark dining rooms. At the rear is a tiny whitewashed courtyard with tables and chairs for 16 or so lucky punters.

Tables in the garden are highly prized and should be booked in advance, otherwise you'll end up inside with everyone else. The garden walls are high, the ground has been covered in decking and there are one or two window boxes plus a very large patio heater.

There is also an awning, which is probably intended to protect diners from drizzle rather than sunstroke. Service is friendly in a no-nonsense sort of way, and even the tables full of tourists feel at ease.

The menu has been refined over the decades - starters range from melon or prawn cocktail to grilled halloumi and pastourma sausages. Ordering 'Andy's mixed dip' brings saucers of tarama, hummus and tzatziki for under a fiver, while another starter, 'Chef's mixed grill', offers loukanica, lounza, halloumi and pastourma for the same price.

You also get a basket of really outstanding hot bread - sliced from a flat loaf a couple of centimetres thick, crusty like focaccia and topped with sesame seeds (this could be a Turkish 'pide'). Main courses are also comfortingly familiar - grilled lamb chops, chicken kebabs.

The fish platters are especially good - plainly cooked, fresh fish, served with chips. The 'most popular dish served at Andy's' - so the menu informs us - is the kleftiko, a pity as it is not very good. Billed as baked lamb served on the bone, it turns out to be a slice of shoulder of lamb, stewed into submission. Get away from the crowd and have something grilled instead.

The wine list features some good Greek wines, including that mouth-filling red, nemea, and perhaps the most accessible of the retsinas, kourtaki. This is grand when served really cold and is a far cry from the rough pine-resin-flavoured stuff you have to put up with on holiday.