NISI Greek Taverna

From The Land comes stacked with chicken, beef, and pork skewers and gyro meat over rice and potatoes; From The Sea answers with calamari fried and grilled, grilled shrimp, and breaded shrimp. The two platters at NISI Greek Taverna split the table's choice the way an island splits its larder — coast on one side, grill on the other. NISI is the Greek word for island, and that is the premise the kitchen runs on, a few steps from the water on Lakeshore Road in downtown Burlington: cook the whole taverna at once, and trust the table to assemble the meal.

The meal usually starts in the meze. Saganaki comes as pan-fried kefalotyri brightened with lemon and flamed with brandy; the calamari is fried or grilled and the octopus grilled, both with tzatziki; spanakopita folds spinach and mixed cheese into phyllo. The dips are their own course — tzatziki, hummus, roasted eggplant, and tirokafteri, the last one feta whipped with chilli and red peppers, all of it gathered into a Trio Dip served with warm pita. From there the menu moves to the grill and the oven. Souvlaki runs in chicken, pork, and beef; the gyro is house-made from beef and lamb; a house-marinated chicken fillet covers the plainer grill order; the braised lamb shank is cooked down until it gives. Moussaka layers eggplant, potato, zucchini, and ground beef under bechamel, and Solomos is a fillet of grilled Atlantic salmon for the table leaning seaward. The steak splits the difference: a ten-ounce striploin that takes optional seafood add-ons, surf and turf on one plate.

What holds the range together is restraint. Nothing on the menu is reaching to reinvent Greek cooking: the salads are the standards done plainly — the Greek salad and the village salad, both heavy with Kalamata olives and feta — and the avgolemono is the classic egg-lemon soup with chicken and rice. There is no single headline dish doing the work; the spread from meze to platter is the signature, and what reads as Mediterranean at the edges only widens the same Greek lane. A diner who knows what they want from a taverna will find it on the page, and a diner who doesn't can read top to bottom and still order well.

The week splits into two rhythms. Lunch runs weekdays from half past eleven to three, when the kitchen leans on pitas and wraps — the Nisi Wrap, a veggie pita, a mushroom wrap, souvlaki and gyro folded to go — a quicker Greek meal than dinner allows. After three, and all day on weekends, the platters and full mains take over: From The Land and From The Sea both land with rice, potatoes, and village salad, enough to feed a table without anyone ordering twice. The setting carries part of the occasion — NISI opened in 2023 as a lakeside dining room, and in warm months the patio puts Lake Ontario a short walk from the table. It is built to flex: a fast plate at noon, a long shared spread at night, and a pair of burgers, the Nisi and a Greek version with feta, cheddar, and oregano, for whoever wandered in for something plainer.

That flexibility is the through-line. NISI serves the whole Greek table rather than a single signature, and the menu is arranged so a group never has to agree — land or sea, meze or main, a pita at lunch or the long platter at night. The name is less a theme than an instruction for how to eat here: order widely, and let the plates pile up in the middle. Close it with baklava and ice cream, or the banana melt wrapped in phyllo with Nutella and pistachio, and the evening lands where a taverna is supposed to — a full table, slowly emptied.