Here’s the question that stops a lot of people before they book. The show sounds fun, sure – but is the food actually any good, or is it just reheated buffet trays dressed up with a bit of bouzouki? I had the exact same suspicion. When something is billed as dinner-plus-theatre-plus-disco for one price, your brain quietly assumes the dinner is the bit they cut corners on. So I went looking for the truth, course by course, because that’s the detail nobody seems to spell out clearly. Want the short version first? You can check tables at Mamma Mia! The Party here and read the rest with a clearer head.
The setup matters, because it shapes the food. The whole evening takes place at The O2 in London on a full recreation of the Greek island of Skopelos – you’re seated inside Nikos’ taverna, a live ABBA-soundtracked story unfolds around you while you eat, and then the night tips over into a late ABBA disco. It is genuinely a four-course Greek meal, served family-style as sharing platters, not individually plated airline trays. That single fact – sharing platters – changes how the whole thing feels. You pass dishes. You argue over the last bit of spanakopita. It’s loud and a little chaotic in the best way.
Course One – The Mezze and Greek Salad
You start with a traditional mezze spread and a proper Greek salad, and this is where my skepticism took its first hit. The mezze arrives as a shared board – the kind of thing you’d actually get at a taverna by the water, not a sad ramekin of supermarket houmous. There’s spanakopita in here too, the spinach-and-feta filo parcels, and they’re warm and flaky rather than sitting in a sweaty pile. Is it the most refined Greek food in London? No, and I’ll be honest about that later. But as an opener that sets the tone, it works. It tells your stomach the evening is taking the meal seriously.
The Greek salad does the job a Greek salad should. Tomatoes, cucumber, olives, a slab of feta, that grassy olive oil. Nothing reinvented – and honestly, you don’t want it reinvented. If reading this is already making you hungry, that’s rather the point. Have a look at available evenings at Nikos’ taverna before they fill up, especially for weekend slots.
Course Two and Three – The Mains, and This Is Where It Peaks
Now we get to the part that decides everything. The mains are braised lamb stifado and slow-cooked beef, brought to the table with garlic-roasted potatoes and briam – that’s the roasted-vegetable bake of courgette, aubergine, peppers and tomato, baked slow until it almost collapses. The lamb stifado is the standout. Stifado is a stew built on patience, lamb cooked down until it shreds against a fork, sweet with onion and warm spice. When it hit the table I stopped being suspicious and started being hungry, which is a different and much better state to be in.
The slow-cooked beef plays the steadier role next to it. Tender, savoury, comforting – the dish your less adventurous friend will quietly clear without a word. And the briam deserves more credit than vegetable sides usually get. Roasted properly, those vegetables go jammy and sweet, and the garlic potatoes soak up everything around them. Sharing platters again, so you build your own plate. Too much lamb and not enough potato? Your fault, reach across. Does it taste like a quiet, candlelit Athens restaurant? Not quite. Does it taste like a warm, generous island taverna feeding a big happy table? Yes – and that’s exactly the brief.
The lamb stifado is the moment the meal stops apologising for being part of a show and just becomes good dinner.
This is also the stretch of the evening where the live story is most fun, performed in the round so it happens around your table rather than up on a far-off stage. You eat, you watch, you eat some more. Reserve a spot for the full Skopelos experience if a long, food-led group night out is your idea of a good evening.
What If You Don’t Eat Meat? The Vegetarian and Vegan Swaps
This is the bit that makes half of you hesitate, so let me be plain. You are not getting a sad plate of leftover salad while everyone else feasts. There are full vegetarian and vegan alternatives built into the menu, not bolted on as an apology. The vegetarian main is a proper moussaka – the layered, baked, deeply savoury kind, which is arguably one of the best things on the whole menu regardless of whether you eat meat. I’d genuinely consider ordering it on purpose.
Vegan diners are looked after across the courses too, right through to dessert – there’s a Greek donut option and a coconut yoghurt alternative so you’re not left watching everyone else have pudding. The shared mezze, the salad, the briam vegetables – a lot of the table is already plant-friendly before you even get to the dedicated swaps. So if your group is mixed, nobody has to be the difficult one. That alone removes the usual headache of booking a meal-out for a crowd. Got a vegan or veggie in the party who always ends up disappointed? Check what’s on the table for every diet here.
Course Four – The Dessert Trio and the Baklava
You finish with poikilia glyko, which simply means a little assortment of sweets – a dessert trio, and the baklava is the headline act. Good baklava is layers of filo, nuts and honey-soaked syrup, and when it’s done right it shatters and then goes sticky and golden. After three courses of sharing platters you might think you’re done. You won’t be. There’s a reason they save the most theatrical sweet for the moment the disco is about to start. Sugar plus ABBA is, it turns out, an excellent combination.
And as covered above, the vegan version doesn’t leave anyone out – the Greek donut and coconut yoghurt mean the whole table finishes together. That’s a small thing that turns out to matter a lot when you’re the one who usually gets skipped at pudding. Planning a birthday or a big group celebration around this? Lock in your dessert-and-disco evening before peak dates go.
The Honest Verdict
So is the food good? Yes – genuinely better than the all-in-one format had any right to deliver, and the lamb stifado and the moussaka would hold up as a dinner on their own. The Times called the whole evening “the very best escape” and the Daily Mirror said “the name of the game is fun,” and that fun-first framing is fair. Easy O2 access helps the Greek-getaway-in-London feeling too; you can even arrive by Thames Clipper boat, which is a daft and lovely way to turn up to dinner. There are group bookings, corporate options, gift vouchers and ticket-plus-hotel packages, and a sister production runs in Stockholm if you fancy the Nordic version.
Now the one honest flaw, because you deserve it. This is taverna feasting tuned for a big room and a big night – generous, warm, properly Greek in spirit – but it is not fine dining, and if you walk in expecting plate-by-plate restaurant precision you’ll be measuring it against the wrong yardstick. Judge it as a brilliant group feast wrapped in a show, and it more than delivers. Hungry yet? Round up your people and go.
