August 10, 2015 Mykonos Restaurant and other Greek foods

August 10, 2015 Mykonos Restaurant and other Greek foods

Today was a good food day in both senses; delicious and healthy. I ate granola with fresh strawberries and Greek yogurt for breakfast. For lunch I ate a large bowl of PPI gazpacho and a garden salad of green leaf lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes from our garden, a green onion, and the last of the feta cheese we bought from Old Windmill Dairy at the Farmers’ Market several weeks ago. I put some of the croutons we made last night with the uneaten French bread on both the salad and the soup.

Suzette told me that Debbie had offered to sell a fancy Miele automatic coffee maker to us and we were going to meet her and Jeff for dinner to pick it up.  At 5:00 Suzette called and said we were meeting at Mykonos restaurant at 6:30, so I was able to watch the business report.  We met Debbie and Jeff at Mykonos and loaded the coffee machine into our car and then went into the restaurant.  As I walked into the restaurant  I noticed that Mykonos had a ½ off special on any bottle of wine on the menu on Monday and Tuesday nights, so I was already excited about the meal.  We had a young waitress who turned out to be less than professional, which can be expected, I guess.  She did not clear the empty glasses and plates quickly until I mentioned it to her and then she made an effort to do that and she was talking with another waitress after our entrée orders were sitting on the counter at the kitchen and I had to get her attention and tell her our food was ready.  Other than that she was nice in a limited knowledge way.

Mykonos has an extensive regular menu and a rather large specials menu for this evening that included fresh sea bass on a bed of spaghetti squash, and grilled swordfish and an acorn squash filled with sautéed  salmon and shrimp.  Jeff took the sea bass, Suzette and I decided to split the acorn squash, and Debbie ordered chicken souvlaki. I had seen a dis h on the appetizer menu that intrigued me, grilled octopus, so I ordered that.  The wine selection was a little rough.  The waitress was clueless about the wines.  I ordered a Marcus Gomez Albariño for $32.00 a bottle at full price and had my heart set on that steely dry white.  In a few minutes the waitress returned with the news that the Albariño was sold out.  I said to her, “Then I will have the Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc.”  She reply, “I am sorry, we are out of that also.” 

Rather than ask if there were any wines not listed on the menu that were available, I ordered tastes of a “New” Riesling and Kouros white.  She brought the tastes and we sampled them and it became immediately clear that the “New” Riesling was the same old sweetened California Riesling we grew up Onondaga the Kouros white was the pleasantly dry white that Kouros produces every year.  How stupid of me to not realize that a good Greek restaurant could be relied upon to have good Greek wines.  I ordered a bottle of Kouros white.  When it came it was a 2014 and labelled Rhoditis, which I assume is the grape but am not sure, because it seems all Kouros wines are grown in Nemea.  This Kouros’ low end white but it had a surprisingly crisp fruit flavor with just a bit of a warm baked after taste that the winery described as an expression of the Greek summer sun, which was not unpleasant.

Jeff’s corvina sea bass looked delicious, a sautéed flirt laid on a pile of spaghetti squash that had been pulled from its shell into long threads.  Debbie’s Chicken was even more interesting, two about ten inch long bamboo skewers filled with large chunks of chicken,bell peppers and onions and charcoal grilled with steamed vegetables a risottoed orzo. Our acorn squash was huge and had been baked to perfection, not too hard, not too soft, filled with a sauté  of shrimp, salmon, strips of red bell pepper, and spinach and covered with the thick white sauce used on Moussaka and baked and supported on a bed of mashed potatoes. I thought it was a wonderfully creative dish that was well executed and presented, although a touch too heavy with the two different sauces and the mashed potatoes.  Suzette and I split one order and both of us had trouble finishing our half.  Suzette's comment, It's Greek comfort food.”

The best dish of the night was the char grilled octopus.  It was served first as an appetizer on a bed of fresh chopped Romaine lettuce.  It looked awful charred chopped pieces of octopus, but it tasted delicious, lots of tender charred chunks served with a lemon cream sauce that tasted amazingly like my Avgolemono soup.

I loved dinner.  I think Mykonos is a superb restaurant that has both a strong grill and strong sauté line.  All the food was beautifully prepared and presented.  It is my favorite Greek restaurant in Albuquerque.

Bon Appetit