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MYTHOS GREEK TAVERNA —like just about every other restaurant I visit along the Ga. 400 corridor in North Fulton — is in a big box. A box with acres of neutral carpeting, tile and plate glass topped in Palladian windows that have no business in this space.

In other words, it is nothing like the Greek restaurants I grew up with. Mythos is nothing like those basement grottoes with their oil paintings of the Acropolis, their Doric columns holding up air, their Parthenon place mats on burgundy linens.

JOEY IVANSCO/Staff (ENLARGE)
At Mythos Greek Taverna, the saganaki is a square of kefalograviera cheese dashed with ouzo and ignited until it becomes crusty and irresistible.
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Overall rating: Food: A mix of upscale and down-home Greek dishes Service: Sweet service from a multi-culti wait staff Setting: A soulless big box like so many other Atlanta restaurants Address, telephone: 880 Holcomb Bridge Road, Roswell. 770-993-0299 Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; noon-11 p.m. Saturdays; noon-10 p.m. Sundays Price range: Lunch entrees $6-$10, dinner appetizers $5-$11, dinner entrees $12-$20 (whole fish may cost up to $30) Credit cards: All major cards accepted Recommended dishes: Moussaka, gyros, saganaki, whole fish Wine list: A fun selection of unfamiliar Greek wines and better-known American ones. Plus, there's always ouzo Full bar or wine/beer: Full bar Reservations: Yes Vegetarian selections: Yes Children: Just fine Parking: Self-parking Wheelchair access: Full Smoking: In the bar area only Noise level: Moderate Patio: Yes Takeout: Yes OUR STAR RATING SYSTEM Outstanding. Sets the standard for fine dining in the region. Excellent. One of the best in the Atlanta area. Very good. Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining. Good. A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss. Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated Fair or Poor.

It's nothing like those Greek restaurants that taught me long ago — taught us all, really — to look for the soulfulness and warmth of home cooking in the exotic. Those restaurants that charged only $3.99 for a spanakopita entree and then threw in a salad made with the first olive oil we had ever tasted and basket after basket of fresh-baked bread still steaming in its crust.

Mythos is Atlanta in the 21st. Flashy and a little expensive — with ample parking, Grey Goose behind the bar and enough AC to make you grab a sweater. Thankfully the kitchen has soul. It may aspire to fine dining, but it succeeds as a solid Greek restaurant in a town that sorely needs more.

If you've ever been to Kyma in Buckhead, you'll recognize its influence on Mythos' menu. You'll go "aha" when the waiter brings an assortment of perfectly raw, whole, glassy-eyed Gulf and Mediterranean fish to the table for you to inspect. He'll talk up the $19.95 lamb chops basted with olive oil and lemon or suggest a meze of wood-fired octopus, quail, sausages and whatnot to start the meal. There are fine Greek wines to try — light and juicy reds, clean and crisp whites — and you can try a flight of mini-tastes.

Forget about all that for a moment.

Let's have a quick workday lunch where the moussaka costs eight bucks and change. It comes with a cup of soup (a respectable avgolemono or a wonderfully thin fish broth holding cooked-to-gush vegetables), a lively Greek salad and that basket of warm, homemade bread that followed me here from 20 years ago. (Somebody take it away before I bust into the Carb Blimp.)

The moussaka is great — all the flavor to stoke your nostalgia for this dish without the oil that used to ooze from it. Each layer — creamy oven-broiled béchamel, lean ground meat hinting of tomato and cinnamon, pillowy eggplant flashing shiny rings of skin — is what you remember but better.

The gyros plate starts with thick, tender Greek pita bread charred over the grill — just what you need to support ribbons of gyros meat and tzatziki made with thick Greek yogurt.

Now let's go to dinner, where the expectations and the prices are higher. The waiter is poking at four fish on a silver tray.

"This is what we have in the kitchen today," he says, lifting a red snapper with one finger on its snout. There's also a really big red snapper, a black sea bass and a striped bass, none looking too happy.

We order our fish. We order meze, lamb and tastes of Greek wine. The meal starts in high style with a saganaki — a square of kefalograviera cheese dashed with ouzo and ignited until it becomes the crusty, oozy-boozy business that no sane person can resist. The country salad — lemony veggies topped with a wedge of creamy feta — is also quite fine.

But there's a hit or miss quality to the appetizers. The various scooped spreads — taramosalata, hummus, skordalia — seem to have had their flavor robbed by refrigeration. Wood-grilled calamari are tender but come with a fermented roasted beet spread when they should just have cut lemon. Fried smelts are crunchy but too shy on flavor to merit redemption of your fried-food points.

That snapper, though — man oh man. The kitchen removes the backbone and sends out a vast platter of parsley-sprinkled fish set between head and tail. It tastes utterly fresh; I trust fish here.

Wood-grilled lamb kebabs are juicy and well-seasoned but gristly. Good but not worth $16. Maybe we should have gone for the chops.

But, truthfully, I've got my eye on the pastichio I see a lady at the next table moaning over. I haven't had a good pastichio since Elton John was with Kiki Dee. I want a souvlaki sandwich and a fat triangle of spanakopita that will leave phyllo crumbs all over my shirt. I want the wonderful-looking baklava and other desserts I've always been too full to try.

You can eat lamb chops in big boxes all over Atlanta. Real Greek food, now that's hard to find.