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Friday, January 22, 2010

Chef Zorba's: The Full Catastrophe?


My neighbors are Greek.  Their protected names are Alex and Harice.  They shuffle along the edges of eighty.

I am cleaning out my Grandma’s gutter –she passed away four months ago –which hadn’t been cleaned in years, when my other neighbors –a gay couple across the street –offer me a leaf blower “id-uhl goweh mutch fast-irh we-ith this,” he tells me.  He’s from Arkansas.  True to his word, everything is going great until I get to the gutter on the North facing side, adjacent to the Greeks.  Three years worth of coagulated, composted leaves instantly slather the side of their house.  Oops.  I get down from the roof, walk next door, and knock.  Alex opens it, “Hey mahn.”  He speaks in an accent that seems more Jamaican than Greek.  “It smells good,” I tell him.  “One sec,” he says and scampers to the kitchen.  He brings back five pieces of a baked Greek good (notable ingredients: spaghetti squash and butter.  Read spaghetti squash doused in butter).  Delicious of course.   

I gather everything into a pile and then go home.  When I come back the next day to remove the pile and thank Harice for the food, she appears at the door frocked in her apron.  I begin thanking her when she holds up a finger and leaves me stranded.  She bustles back with three rolls and a paper plate adorned with Greek pastries; my neighbors have taught me to be more thankful.  She tells me not to worry about the pile of composted crud –she will get it. 
            
In relationships (even that of a writer and reader), I believe in full disclosure –here are my other Greek associations: there is the overly obnoxious, strongly feminine (meaning she would actually assert her opinion, which at the time was too much for me to handle) girl who lived on the floor below me freshman year –it is reasoned that she doesn’t know how to use a telephone and that is why her voice could be heard hollering at the other end of the hallway.  Then there is the Greek “student” (use that term loosely) who lived on my hall.  He is short, stocky, smokes a lot (cigarettes), hogs the ball in soccer, consistently wakes up at two o’clock in the afternoon missing most of his classes, takes forty-five minute shits, and all of this would've been alright if it weren’t that his roommate revealed to me (post facto freshman year) that once in his infantile stages of REM sleep, he awoke to Aph –as we called him–masturbating at his PC.

The above has no importance other than to demonstrate the smorgasbord of associations that scatter my platter: that there’s no such thing as a clean plate.

I went to Zorba’s (I would later learn that the owner was not titled as such) seeking a refuge from my inundation of shaky associations with the Greek culture.  So when I pull onto East Twelfth from Monroe and discern no Zorba’s, I wonder whether Greece just isn’t for me.  But no, “come home with your shield or on it.”  I see a boy and a girl (early twenties –does that make you a man and a woman?) smoking outside of a liquor store and ask them if they know where it is.  I subtly direct the question at the cute girl.  She doesn’t know but her boyfriend seems to, “It’s either on this block here or further down the road.”  I had already checked the block, so I thank them and head yonder.

Four blocks down I stop at a crosswalk to ask another man and woman (this time it appears to be man and mother, though it could’ve been a cougarous relationship). It is the woman who responds, “Keep on going,” and as I bike off into the night she calls out, “we were just there.” 

And there it is, Chef Zorba’s; not exactly the Parthenon of “hipsters” –although I have yet to fully dissect the meaning of that word –but Congress Park does have a good feel.   Unless you approach the restaurant face on, where a blue and white eavesdrop announces the casa of cuisine, you will only catch sight of a sign that juts from the side with unexciting black and red scribbles imposed on a dimly lit opalescent background.

But let’s face it, not every sign is as captivating as the
swiveling neon one christening Duffy’s Cherry Cricket and because it isn’t hard to apply the metaphor of judging books by their cover to signs of a restaurant (or even the title of a review for that matter); I take a deep breath, unsuccessfully attempt to expunge my Greek prejudices, finish my breath, and saunter in.  Seat Yourself.  I acquiesce.  I take a once over of the establishment and sit down at a table next to three men –the Denver equivalent to hillbillies.  

Booths border both sides of the restaurant, which is divided by a house-like wall with windows (perhaps an import from the Mediterranean); booths also align this Berlin Wall-like structure; tables aisle the two sets of booths.  Not cramped but cozy.  The kitchen can be seen through a rectangular window, matted by a brick-like façade remnant of Magritte.  Greek Music plays softly in the background; not loud enough to drone out the discourses of the three tangible men seated at the table over but too loud for my auditory lobe to process a theoretical conversation of a group of hypothetical girls I wish were sitting to my left.  

Perhaps it is because I arrive at seven-thirty but the place seems vacant; soon departing couples dust the corners.  Whether or not the rush came when my navigational facilitators were dining or whether Monday night doesn’t goad the Foodies, I can’t say –I am not an oracle.  What I can say is that regardless, the service is exceptional.  Besides the existential waverings of where to sit as well as my water glass remaining half empty (it still had ice) for protracted periods of time, I am coddled and cared for.  Note: The day after I reviewed the restaurant, I had my first meeting with a book group (all men, classics only –so as to preclude the subtle infiltration of Oprah’s Books onto the reading list).  I told the group about my visit to Zorba’s and a fellow bookworm asked, “Did they fill your water glass?  That is how I determine a good restaurant.”  I laughed and then explained the situation.  A filled cup of H2O is more important to some than it is to others.

If you expect to find a waitress with a napkin creased across her wrist, you won’t find it here; what you will find is a family-like staff well acquainted with the menu and adequately versed in Greek dining.  The “regulars” are nestled into the bosom of this family, which is homey to think about until I realize that I barely cling to the branches of the extended relatives.  Still, I have the inkling that if I were to visit frequently enough, I'd be invited to the reunion. 

The three men though, have already wiggled their way into the nucleus.  The waitress talks to them about her “football injury” not by playing but by watching.  She talks of the “Favre-Manning bowl” both names I know but then goes on to other references that are all Greek to me.  She skirts to another table and chats with two women.


The owner, a bespectacled man of modest height donning jeans and a polo shirt with skimpy stripes, occasionally emerges from the kitchen to peruse the floor.   Not a floor man but a loiterer dispensing selected attention to certain people.  Case in point: he provides a Serbian woman and her husband, whom he approaches for the reason that he identifies her as such –she seems dazzled by the feat, with two Greek pastries on the house for which I want to reprimand him because if you don’t have enough for everyone than you shouldn’t share at all.  But I don’t because his was a nice gesture. 

         “It was fantastic,” remarks the husband of the Serbian.
         “Ah fantastisk,” repeats the owner “thanks.” 

Eventually, assisted by the waitress I get the attention of Jimmy; it is true, we share the same moniker though I don’t feel the need to mention it.  He tells me about the history of the restaurant, how it used to be two doors down – “and then they moved here and opened the next day,” the waitress adds from around the partition.  He tells me how he partnered with the Greek fellow and together the restaurant has been in operation for twenty-five years.  As for the American, Mexican cuisine it’s as one would assume, a world that circumvents specialization in an age that whistles for a more generalized one.  I look at the menu, giving the “Classic Dinner Entrees” (American concoctions) less of a glance than girls bestow to me on a crowded summer day striding down Sixteenth Street.  I give the Mexican a once over –long enough to see the Chicken Chimichanga –and then I move on. 

The waitress comes over two times before I am ready to order and then before the third, from a distance, she teeters her thumbs between the “ups” and down position and rather than just nodding, which I didn’t think of until after the fact, I awkwardly stick up my two thumbs.  I decide on the “Spread of Greece”: “Four Grecian dips with pita bread.  Taramasalata, Skordalia, Hummus, and Tzatziki.” 

The Tzatziki could use more dill, it is too thick for what I prefer –still, far past the point of pleasantly edible.  The Taramasalata, “a Greek caviar of carp roe whipped and blended with spices and extra virgin olive oil,” is something that I have never had.  It is savory but bland –my taste buds tell me that it adds a nice layer of lubrication to my arteries.  The Hummus, of which you could probably muster five hundred different and decent recipes with one Google search, settles somewhere closer to good than great on Aristotle’s Golden Mean.  Muffled comes to mind.  If I were making it, I would go with a more garlicky flavor, a fluffier texture.  Bordering the three other dishes is the Skordalia, a culinary preparation of garlic, mashed potatoes, and olive oil (in such plentitude that I later found out upon dismounting from my bike and disrobing my backpack that it had leaked from the container and into my bag–that’s a positive);  with its abundance of garlic, it pleasantly compliments the hummus. Take all of the above with a grain of salt (indeed, the hummus probably could take some as well) because I am not Greek nor have I ever ventured to the land of Hellas; I have only eaten at Greek restaurants and I have Greek neighbors. 

Originally thinking about getting the “Gyro Plate” for the entrée, the waitress suggests that I get the Spanakopita because it includes the gyro.  I concur.  The plate is delivered with spinach and feta cheese inserted with baked layers of flaky phyllo, the gyro, pita bread, and French fries.  Yum (that’s for the French fries).  Actually, I'd be flattered had they decided to keep these frites on the children’s menu.  In addition, a standard Greek salad, a pleasant accompaniment but nothing to write home about, escorts the meal.  The Spanikopita is tasty.  The gyro is wittily carved to a slender succulence: thin enough to be tackled by the incisors.  I am sure Sam I Am would eat it with green eggs and ham but I have it on the pita with tzatziki and it is splendid. 

In the end, I give Chef Zorba’s three dots out of four: not because the food is solid (which it is), but because the atmosphere and service sometimes trump the main course (Dominoes, this doesn’t apply to you).  And of course the price (twenty two dollars with ample food to pack up), which is completely affordable to even the stingiest of college grads (as a boy Bar Mitzvahed and two years out of school, I collect both categories).  In fact, the service –the vibe… the Duende is so comforting that I tip over the standard gratuity, which given my two aforementioned characteristics, says a lot.  Three dots out of four because of hope, hope that one day I will return in the summer, sit out on the patio, and –in the words of a musical artist who had a flickering fling, a thing of the past with our own American version of Nike –“soak up the sun.”  In the end, it was not at all a full catastrophe; rather, like the song of the Sirens, I just wanted to tempt your attention.