‘In business, some things aren’t going to work,’ says David Carter. ‘You have to be relaxed about it.’

Relaxation seems to come naturally to him. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a deep Bajan accent that brings to mind rum punches and hammocks, Carter cuts a large, languid figure. It helps, too, that his restaurants have tended not just to work, but to be thundering successes.

After starting out in street food, Carter has created two of London’s best new restaurants of the past ten years: Smokestak, which has been bringing beautiful barbeque to Shoreditch High Street since 2016, and Manteca, around the corner on Curtain Road, where Carter teamed up with Chris Leach to spin fresh pastas and slice homemade cured meats.

This year, Carter has done it again. We are sitting in the happy clatter of Agora, the downstairs half of Carter’s new restaurant duo in Borough Market. With an unforgettable spin on the food of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, both restaurants have shot straight to the top of London’s most in-demand and best-reviewed tables. Upstairs is Oma, a smarter but laid-back spot that you can book, which Giles Coren said was a ‘slam dunk for best restaurant of the year so far.’

Agora is walk-ins only, a taverna-style small-plates wine bar with an attitude, the raucous younger sister of the two. It is a Monday lunchtime, but it might as well be a Friday night. There is hardly an empty table. The murmur of conversation and the clunk of cutlery on plates mingle with the trains thundering above and a lively soundtrack. Passers-by peer in, lured by the hubbub and aroma of grilled meat and freshly baked bread. After being seated, they aredelighted by glistening lamb and chicken thigh skewers sprinkled with sumac; silk-smooth hummus with hot crunchy crisps; slabs of pork souvla cut into thick wedges, the skin crisped to a golden crust.

As much as you can break down the interiors or the menu or the attentive service or surprisingly lean prices, what strikes you about Oma and Agora is that they feel harmonious. Everything is of a piece, from the design of the rooms – sleek spaces in olive and light brown – to the basement bakery which supplies pillowy flatbreads to the whole building.

Carter says he got the idea from a holiday – or rather several holidays. It is a refreshing admission at a time when most new openings seem to feel obliged to speak to some ancient familial connection. ‘In 2022 my girlfriend and I were looking at going to the Amalfi coast, but it was like a grand a night, so she said, why don’t we go to Greece?’ he explains ‘So we went to Crete, then Santorini, Milos, Sifnos, and lo and behold I fell in love with it.’ More research trips followed with his son, girlfriend, friends and colleagues: to Istanbul, New York, all over Greece – eight trips in total last year, slowly building a picture of what he might do with the space.

Until now, the capital’s Greek restaurants have tended to the traditional. (AA Gill, perhaps unkindly, wrote that Greek food was ‘unremittingly ghastly’.) Think of Lemonia, the Primrose Hill institution, or Tsiakkos & Charcoal in Notting Hill. Mezze, souvlaki, halloumi, moussaka. Delicious but unadventurous. By and large, Greek food has not had the contemporary revamp that French, Spanish or Italian dishes have enjoyed. Agora and Oma change this. Carter and his young, lively team have taken familiar flavours and given them a very London overhaul.

‘We want to make restaurants that are truly unique to us, and unique to London,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to be able to make a concept adapt to the city it’s in. There’s a fine line between having integrity and being disingenuous. We try to strike a balance. London is really progressive. It’s unkind to some, kind to others. It’s about having an understanding of the market. I’ve seen great menus, but they’d be great in Thessaloniki, not Borough Market.’

By way of explanation, he breaks down the Agora version of the Greek salad, which comes as thick-cut chunks of cucumber and tomato sprinkled with oregano and served with a vinaigrette of red wine vinegar and olive oil. There are no olives and no feta, either. Carob rusk adds a croutonish crunch; for the cheese they use galomizithra, a soft Cretan sheep’s cheese. ‘It’s a very country-style salad,’ Carter says. ‘The cheese is very creamy, and when you add it with the vinaigrette it emulsifies. Rather than an oily, watery mess at the bottom of the salad, you are left with a gorgeously creamy sauce.’ You might not get away with these twists in Athens, but you can in London.

While the queue outside Agora and the wait for a table at Oma suggests the businesses will do fine financially, Carter says he encourages his staff not to worry about the margins. ‘I think dining is an emotion,’ he says. ‘It sounds a bit wanky, but when we do a project there’s no growth plan, we do things organically.’

‘I try not to look at numbers. I think about what I hope it can generate rather than what it costs. It’s a bit of a wild theory but it means you can worry more about the customer experience rather than a couple of grand here or there.’

It helps that Carter finds himself at a point in his career where he can afford to take a longer view. After a childhood in Barbados, he moved to Toronto to study hospitality and tourism at university.  Then came a spell in California, before moving to London in 2008 to work for Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s. He went on to the Savoy Grill and finally, Roka, which is where he was working when he started Smokestak. Inspired by the Bajan barbecues of his childhood as well as those of the deep south, Smokestak quickly became a cult street food hit, opening a permanent site in 2016. Manteca followed in 2021, but soon Carter was restless for another project of his own.

‘I missed doing it myself,’ he says. ‘I missed writing the menus, missed the travel, missed the real curation. With Manteca, I was involved in the design and opening, but it’s very much Chris’s cooking. All my restaurants are very different, but if they weren’t I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic. Sometimes I think I’m an idiot, but it’s love more than a plan.’

Apart from his own burgeoning empire, he says he admires what the Super8 group of restaurants are doing -as well as the team behind the Plimsoll in Islington. When we meet, the latter have just opened their second permanent site, a Spanish-inspired pintxos bar in an old fish and chip shop in Stroud Green. You don’t have to reach too far to see the similarities with what Carter is doing.

‘You can tell they don’t have any outside noise or advice,’ he says. ‘Everything is organic. I think in an industry filled with deep pockets and expensive stuff, you don’t need money to have taste. They have real taste. I salute them. I think what they’re doing is effortless.’

You might say the same of his restaurants, too. He makes success look extremely laid back.