Best. Greek. Ever.
Delta may be the worst airline in the history of flight. Tim and I were supposed to be on a direct flight arriving in Seattle last Thursday. Instead, we ended up in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Vancouver on Friday and finally wheeled (yes we drove) into Seattle on Saturday.
Still, our adventure was a blast and due to our little detour, I had the best greek meal in the history of greek food.
One little note about Vancouver. It's a great city...at least I'm pretty sure it is. It was raining while we were there and I couldn't see the mountains which are supposed to be gorgeous. And the skyline isn't so visually appealing either. It's like a mad architect took over in 1970 and built zillions of the ugliest residential buildings ever. But the street-level atmosphere is awesome. It's trendy, it's ethnic, it's fun. And did I mention the greek food?
We were walking down the street, trying to decide if we wanted Thai, Vietnamese, Italien, Seafood or Greek. After realizing that Thai is the only ethnic food we can get in Cincinnati, we decided on Greek. We went into a little place called Maria's Taverna. It was a single room with the walls painted in greek island scenes and greenery hanging down from the rafters. We sat down at a white-clothed table, thrilled that we had a chance to dry out. Tim suggested the Greek dinner for two and as I was incredibly indecisive, I agreed.
After the pita w/tsanski and greek salads, they brought out our platter. And our sides. It was ridiculous how much food we had. There was chicken, dolmas, grilled calamari, some sort of greek sausage and a huge chunk of lamb in the middle. It was beautiful....and then there was silence....and then we devoured 90% of it. Tim ate the rice. I ate the potatoes. I ate the calamari. Tim ate the lamb. We finished the dolmas.
And because it was still raining outside, we decided to order more wine and see if we could polish off the last of the lamb and chicken. We polished off the wine, but not the food. It was truly so good and filling that we absolutely couldn't eat anymore even though we truly wanted to.
But beyond the food, the reason I like this place so much was that it had that special dining atmosphere that you don't see a lot in the US. It's that un-rushed feeling where dining is an event to be savoured, the entertainment for the evening. There were tables of people around us who were there before we got there and still there 2.5 hours later when Tim and I, now suffiently dried and intoxicated, decided to walk back to the hotel....the hotel that was 4 km away. (this is Canada, it's metric)
Our goal was to walk off our dinner, but given that we didn't eat the next day till 3pm, 4km probably wasn't enough walking. But it had finally stopped raining and there's nothing more gorgeous than nightlife in the city. So we walked and walked and fell asleep pleased that the greek gods had blessed us with their wonderful cusine...served by our friendly neighbors to the north.
