Last Saturday, after my surveying and successful transportation adventure, I went on another adventure...a food adventure (one of the best kinds of adventuring)!
In any case, I went to the land of the Greek food, which was 2 bus rides away (one of which was a REALLY GHETTO AREA). It also took an hour to get there but...
IT WAS SO WORTH IT. We went to Greek Islands Restaurant (also has really good Yelp reviews).
So this is what I had and what other people had (stolen from other people's facebook pictures):
Grilled Octopus: I tried eating my friend's dish and it was pretty delicious. The octopus was grilled pretty well--slightly charred on the outside but not dry at all. The sauce over the octopus was slightly citrusy (I'm guessing they added some lemon).
Combination Platter and Shish Kebabs (in the background):
Combination platter consisted of koftas (beef and lamb meatballs, which make them juicy and flavorful), dolmades (my favorite, these are grape leaves stuffed with rice/pine nuts/other things, which have a more refreshing flavor), buttered rice, moussaka (kind of like a lasagna with eggplant instead of pasta and a layer of bechamel sauce on the top instead of cheese) and some slices of lamb (which according to my friend were pretty dry).
-probably a good sampler if you don't have much of a background knowledge of Greek food, but I feel like the fact that the lamb was dry is just such a disappointment because I associate Greek food with cooking lamb really excellently.
Didn't try the shish kebabs because I didn't know the person who ordered them that well (so it would be awkward if I asked to eat some of his food--but never mind, I've had shish kebabs in the past so I don't really feel like I missed out on much).
Beef/Lamb Gyros: I thought it was interesting how they gave you the component parts of the gyros and told you to wrap it yourself (similar to Mexican-style wrap your own tacos/tortillas) but I feel that the waiter should perhaps give some information about how to go about eating the gyros. I was on the verge of telling the person who was eating this how to eat it properly (like a burrito instead of a pizza), but thankfully, I restrained myself. Yay!
Make your own combination: Spinach Pie+Gyros: I liked how this restaurant allowed you to mix and match stuff (perfect for indecisive people such as myself, but this was not my food FYI). This looked okay...the person who was eating it really liked it and actually took a bite of it before the picture was taken (that's how hungry he was/how appetizing this looked).
Roasted Leg of Lamb and Spinach Rice: I HAD THIS AND IT WAS PRETTY GOOD. A bit pricey and it's not amazingly, "I just died and went to heaven good" but it was cooked perfectly such that the lamb was flavorful and pretty much fell off the bone. The spinach rice was also good (and it helped that it was a vegetable, which made me feel less guilty about the lamb). I couldn't finish this though so I brought some back and shared the leftovers with my friends today. The lamb was still good. :)
Ambrosia: Since I wanted to detract from just eating baklava, I made the executive decision to order this. It's basically like a baklava with shredded phyllo dough as layers instead of whole phyllo dough, topped with ice cream and caramel sauce. It was good, but too sweet in my opinion (omission of caramel sauce would have helped I'm sure). I liked the texture of this better compared to the baklava actually, since the baklava's phyllo dough layers were pretty dense and therefore hard to cut (and eat and share).
Tiramisu: Tiramisu was pretty decent. I've had better, lighter tiramisu where the ladyfinger layers were drenched (and oozing) with the coffee liqueur (making an excellent contrast) with the dense lightness of the mascarpone cream...but this was good tiramisu. Especially taking into consideration that this was a Greek (and not Italian) restaurant.
Baklava: Baklava was goood. I liked the overall sweetness ratio of it better compared to the Ambrosia. Really hard to cut though, but otherwise very yummy.
So the other thing that happened while we were there was that we undertipped, because one of the members of our small party didn't want to chip in for appetizers and everyone else didn't want to pay extra. In any case, I think that calls for a return trip back to Greektown in the future.
Beef/Lamb Gyros: I thought it was interesting how they gave you the component parts of the gyros and told you to wrap it yourself (similar to Mexican-style wrap your own tacos/tortillas) but I feel that the waiter should perhaps give some information about how to go about eating the gyros. I was on the verge of telling the person who was eating this how to eat it properly (like a burrito instead of a pizza), but thankfully, I restrained myself. Yay!
Make your own combination: Spinach Pie+Gyros: I liked how this restaurant allowed you to mix and match stuff (perfect for indecisive people such as myself, but this was not my food FYI). This looked okay...the person who was eating it really liked it and actually took a bite of it before the picture was taken (that's how hungry he was/how appetizing this looked).
Roasted Leg of Lamb and Spinach Rice: I HAD THIS AND IT WAS PRETTY GOOD. A bit pricey and it's not amazingly, "I just died and went to heaven good" but it was cooked perfectly such that the lamb was flavorful and pretty much fell off the bone. The spinach rice was also good (and it helped that it was a vegetable, which made me feel less guilty about the lamb). I couldn't finish this though so I brought some back and shared the leftovers with my friends today. The lamb was still good. :)
Ambrosia: Since I wanted to detract from just eating baklava, I made the executive decision to order this. It's basically like a baklava with shredded phyllo dough as layers instead of whole phyllo dough, topped with ice cream and caramel sauce. It was good, but too sweet in my opinion (omission of caramel sauce would have helped I'm sure). I liked the texture of this better compared to the baklava actually, since the baklava's phyllo dough layers were pretty dense and therefore hard to cut (and eat and share).
Tiramisu: Tiramisu was pretty decent. I've had better, lighter tiramisu where the ladyfinger layers were drenched (and oozing) with the coffee liqueur (making an excellent contrast) with the dense lightness of the mascarpone cream...but this was good tiramisu. Especially taking into consideration that this was a Greek (and not Italian) restaurant.
Baklava: Baklava was goood. I liked the overall sweetness ratio of it better compared to the Ambrosia. Really hard to cut though, but otherwise very yummy.
So the other thing that happened while we were there was that we undertipped, because one of the members of our small party didn't want to chip in for appetizers and everyone else didn't want to pay extra. In any case, I think that calls for a return trip back to Greektown in the future.
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