Two-year-olds and restaurants may not mix, but there’s nothing that says you can’t drop a two-year-old off at Grandma’s house and go out to enjoy a nice, quiet dinner for a change. It just doesn’t happen all that often - for us, anyway. So…we dropped Jackson off at Grandma’s house and made our way north to one of the mainstays in Greek/Mediterranean cuisine here in the city, Khoury’s Mediterranean Island. Just west of Keystone Avenue, Khoury’s exists in that grey area between Broad Ripple proper and Glendale and has been around for quite awhile - but this was our first trip.
Inside, the place could almost be mistaken for a Perkins restaurant, with two exceptions. One is all of the Grecian urns lying about (and the vaguely Picasso-esque painting of a belly dancer on the wall behind our table), and the other was that I was a willing customer. There’s also a tiny little deli/market at the front of the restaurant, before you get into the dining room. I suppose you could equate this to the bakery area of a Perkins - but, again, the difference would be that I was there of my own accord.
The menu has most of the things you would find at other Greek restaurants, including moussaka, spanakopita, and gyros; but they also offer a selection of the kabobs that are usually found in places that focus more on Turkish cuisine, as well as a token hamburger for the tea-party and Freedom Fries folks. The requisite Greek salad precedes the meal, and the offering here is no exception to the iceberg lettuce/tomatoes/cucumbers/feta cheese/olives/vinaigrette that you get everywhere else - although this salad may have been a bit larger than is usual. (That said, it’s got nothing on the Greek salad at the Ben Ash deli in New York City. There, twenty bucks gets you a salad roughly the size of Minas Tirith, and the feta cheese comes in blocks the size of an iPod.) The olives on this one were disappointing, though; they lacked the aromatic punch that a good Mediterranean olive should have, and on first bite they sort of dissolve into a grainy mouthful of goop that made me wonder how long they’d been sitting around.
Amy chose the Shadi combination plate ($15.95), and I had the Jordan’s Vegetarian Combo ($14.94). I didn’t notice until the plates came out that they were pretty much the same thing. Both had falafel, spanakopita, and tiropita; and then hers had hummus with pita and mine had vegetarian dolmathes. While we were waiting for the food to come out, the couple sitting behind me asked the server several times to tell them what the kitchen had that was fresh that day. At first, the answer was that everything was fresh, as they had been very busy the day before and had run out of practically everything; but after repeated questioning, they were told that the grape leaves (dolmathes) were especially fresh. Then a couple was seated behind Amy, and the woman asked - before she even sat down - if the food there was good. How do you respond to that? I looked over Amy’s shoulder a couple of times, and the poor woman looked positively revolted as she perused the menu.
And then the food arrived. We were both taken with the flavor of the falafel, which was crispy on the outside and quite well seasoned inside. There was a strong flavor of curry and of something else I could not quite place but which might have been cumin. The effect was a much earthier flavor than I think is usual with falafel, which is typically heavy on parsley and comes across as both earthy and herbal. Both versions work, and this earthier version was a nice variation. Everything else on the plate was well done, but not especially remarkable - although the spanakopita struck a better balance between spinach and cheese than I’m used to. More often than not, spanakopita seems like a spinach bomb when I order it. Not so here. The Greek potatoes were also off the beaten path - cubed and roasted, home fries style, rather than served up boiled and flavored brightly with lemon and herbs. Once again, a not unwelcome departure from the norm.
For us, Santorini’s, in Fountain Square, is the standard-bearer for Greek food in Indianapolis - Taki’s potatoes are amazing, and I could eat their garlic mushroom soup every day of the week and want for more; and the Bosphorous, on south East Street, is the answer for Turkish food. I would not choose Khoury’s over either, but there are a couple of things on the menu at Khoury’s that will probably merit a return trip. The stuffed olives on the appetizer menu - stuffed with Asiago cheese and then breaded and fried - sounded awfully good, as did a couple of Turkish dishes involving lamb and tomato sauce; but I had a bit of a head cold and opted for known quantities since I wasn’t sure if I was really going to be able to taste everything.
Definitely worth a trip, if you’re in the neighborhood - especially since the Parthenon in the village folded (sigh). They’ve got a hooka bar too, if you’re hip to that sort of thing.
1850 East Broad Ripple Avenue
251-8610
www.khoury’s-restaruant.com
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