21 Bateman Street, London, W1 (020 7287 6638). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £70

So very much is expected of the modern restaurant-goer: the hyper-sensitivity to distinguish the quality of one tonkotsu stock from another; the knees to put up with all that queueing at non-reservation places; the sangfroid to pull off mayonnaise dribbling down your arms as you eat by a food truck, as desperate for emergency Kleenex as a 15-year-old boy at bedtime; a plausible enough manner to claim convincingly that no one understands how good genuine Mexican food is, when the closest you’ve been to Tijuana is a budget bottle of tequila from Aldi.

To these talents must now be added another: psychic powers; the ability to know things about a new restaurant without access to information from any discernible source. I am fed up with new, baggy-arsed outfits which can’t be bothered to post information online about what days they’re open or what times; who appear to think that sharing a menu, even a sample one, is some weird, uncool, bourgeois act when its customers should just, like, chill, and get with the general vibe. I don’t want to chill. I haven’t chilled since an all-nighter on Filey beach in 1986, and even then I wasn’t convinced it was a good idea.

I am fed up with new restaurants that restrict their online presence to a Twitter feed which is just links to pictures of drunk customers with beards or grilled steaks, or drunk customers with beards eating those sodding steaks. When I complained about all this on Twitter, I was told I should have been old-fashioned and phoned them up. Except these places don’t take bookings so they don’t bother advertising their phone numbers. I mean, why would they?

Recently I tried to review a pub off Oxford Street called The Woodstock, which opened in March, serving Japanese pub food: things on sticks grilled or deep-fried, and Japanese beers on draft. It had been mentioned admiringly on various food blogs. There was no website that Google’s algorithm would let me find, but there was a Facebook page and it had a PDF of the menu, which had Japanese script and everything. Grand. I like Japanese restaurants which are making the effort to introduce us to a repertoire beyond the standard. I got out my Oyster card.

Except now it’s a tacky cocktail bar and the food is the unholy trinity of hot dogs, burgers and contempt. “Oh yeah,” said the waiter. “We changed the menu two weeks ago but we haven’t got round to putting it on the website.” It turns out I am not Madame Arcati. I can only apologise.

So we got in a cab and went over to Bateman Street in Soho, where a new place serving the primary street food of Greece has just been opened by a bunch of Athenians. What’s more they have a website complete with a menu and opening times. Praise be. On Google maps Suvlaki is listed as “Greek skewers and pitta amid hip graffiti”, which pretty much tells you all you need to know. Given the GBH Greece has recently suffered at the hands of the bastard neoliberals of Europe, I’m minded to cut the review here and implore you to go eat there as an act of solidarity.

But Suvlaki is deserving of more than that. As a backpacker across Greece in the 80s, I lived off charcoal-grilled skewers of pork, lamb or chicken, dragged off the metal spike by the flat bread held like an oven glove, in which they would then be wrapped and sold for pennies. Here, the menu has been designed with the input of Elias Mamalakis, a huge name in the Greek food world, with the obligatory TV and book deals. With our own sleb chefs, that’s usually the cue for warning klaxons to sound, but here everything is as it should be.

Crucially, they have great bread. Just as nigiri sushi is really about the rice, not the fish, so I think this food is about the pitta. If it’s stodgy and dull, appetite deadens as the mouth dries. Here it is crisp based and has a loose, slightly oily texture and a compelling char. This bread is where low-carb diets go to die.

The freshly charcoaled skewers are piled on triangles of the bread, on to which they leak their juices. Minced lamb is properly seasoned and tightly packed, the flame-crisped outer skin giving away to something altogether more ripe and licentious. There are seared hunks of chicken thigh, porky wild boar sausages skewered with cherry tomatoes, their skins bursting from the application of heat, and, from the rather grandly titled list of “signature dishes”, skewers of lamb shoulder, carved from animals that had a bit of time on the clock. The wrapped-up versions are equally pleasing, if a little heftier than those I used to consume by the handful down by the docks in Piraeus.

The feta in a Greek salad is not just a punch of salty chalk, but the real crumbly version with that rich lactic tang. There is a fiery tomato relish and a tzatziki which is as much green punch and crunch as yogurt. The chips may be of a shape familiar from a thousand freezer bags, but they fry them well. It’s all very agreeable.

Which sounds like damning with faint praise and is, for there are two issues. Firstly, once liberally sprinkled with their seasoning mix, heavy with fragrant dried oregano – the smell of a Greek village street on a still, hot afternoon – one piece of grilled meat becomes much like any other. It tastes great. Unfortunately it all tastes the same.

The second problem is price. This is essentially a street-food operation inside bricks and mortar. Yes, you get a nice blue dining room with banquettes backed by halved Doric columns, and comfy tables to eat at, and trays to eat off. But £11 for three of those skewers and £12 for the lamb is steep. The cheapest wine from the very short list is £22. No, I’m not comparing the pricing with that down by the Athenian docks; as with Rome, recently, that would be silly. But when an eyebrow raises at the bill for what is essentially a casual eating experience, one which will be done with in 45 minutes if you try really hard to delay, there’s an issue.

It’s not extortionate. It’s not wanton. It’s just a touch optimistic. Still, at least they have a website where you can check those prices in advance. Which is more than can be said for some places.

Jay’s news bites

■ For more grilled meats, this time from the Turkish side, head to Super Kebab on London’s Stoke Newington Road, which earlier this year won the top gong at the British Kebab Awards. It’s a straightforward take away and all the obvious options are represented, from shish to kofta, but the star is the doner: freshly minced, well-spiced lamb shoulder, caramelised to a turn and served with chilli and garlic sauces. From £6 (superkebab.net).

■ Hankering for fresh, sustainable seafood direct from Cornwall? Try Fish for Thought, which delivers everything from lobster and squid to hake and mackerel by mail order all over the country. Minimum orders are £25, and delivery is £7.95 (fishforthought.co.uk).

■ Keith Richardson has been fined £3,000 after the downdraught from his helicopter in the grounds of his Falmouth hotel picked up a parasol and fired it at a young guest, who was treated for shoulder injuries – which rather redefines the notion of hospitality. Speaking to the BBC, Richardson said: “I have been a naughty boy.” Well yes, quite.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk

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