Feta (Not Quite) Accompli
Our second meal isn't as dazzling as our first at a new Greek eatery
So it was with a sense of assurance that I invited my high school boyfriend Stanley and his girlfriend Carol, in town from Chicago for the holidays, to join my parents and me for dinner at Estia the night after Christmas. Chicago has a famous Greektown, but I knew that the dinner Robert and I had had was equal to or better than anything I'd eaten in that neighborhood. Everybody liked the pretty room -- and the bottle of Gaia Agiorgitiko, a soft and very drinkable red that I picked with the aid of a helpful little booklet Estia had printed up called "The Grape Lexicon of Greece." Choosing what to eat from the menu and the big tray of small plates felt festive and fun. (I was saddened not to find the seftalies on the menu. "We took it off," the server told me. "People just weren't ordering it.")
The festive feeling continued through the starters: We liked the gigantes (large white beans cooked with bits of carrots and onions), the vinegary pickled eggplant, the excellent tzatziki, the little fresh beef sausages known as sutzukakia. And it's always fun to see the leaping fire when the server flames the salty casseri sheep- and goat's-milk cheese with a bit of brandy tableside, which turns into the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, without the bread: Called saganiki, it's crusty outside, gooey within. Here she also flamed some fat pork sausages that carried the mild flavor of orange rind. The sweet young server said "Opa!" as the fire roared toward the ceiling, though without much enthusiasm.
Location Info
Map
Estia
1224 Grant
San Francisco, CA 94133
Category: Restaurant > Greek
Region: North Beach/ Chinatown
|
0 user reviews
|
Write A Review |
| Save to foursquare |
|
Details
Gigantes white beans $3
Fried smelts $8
Cretan dako $4
Whole charbroiled fish $20/pound
Rack of lamb $21
Fig-and-lavender ice cream $6
433-1433
Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday from 5 to 10 p.m. (Friday and Saturday until 11). Closed Monday.
Reservations accepted
Wheelchair accessible
Parking: difficult
Muni: 12, 15
Noise level: moderate
Related Content
More About
And it was without much enthusiasm, alas, that we ate our way through much of the menu. I only really liked the plate of rosy grilled lamb chops, a full rack cut into eight chops and served with the same potatoes and greens I'd enjoyed with my seftalies; and the big square of moussaka, layers of eggplant, potatoes, and minced lamb and beef topped with a soft pillow of béchamel sauce, scented with cinnamon and nutmeg. But even these seemed familiar, much less exciting than the grilled daurade and seftalies of the previous meal. My mother, suffering with a cold that was making its way around the family, had begun with a disappointing cup of avgolemono soup, missing the sharp tang of lemon that is its principal thrill: It tasted like Campbell's chicken soup with rice. She followed it with a casserole of baked lamb shank with orzo, pleasant but characterless. (Where were the clean, true flavors I'd enjoyed in the dako, the smelts, the tzatziki?) My plate of dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) and the little flaky pastries called tiropita (stuffed with feta) and spanikopita (spinach and feta) were just OK. The gyros combo -- chosen, unfortunately, by Carol, a Charlotte Rampling look-alike whose opinion of my taste (Stanley: good; dinner: not so good) was falling fast -- was something of a travesty: The meats tasted commercial and processed, the "chicken" strips especially spongy and unpleasant.
Even the desserts failed to impress. I still liked the ice cream, but the rice pudding was overly perfumed by its rose petal jam, and the galactobureko (custard-filled pastry) and baklava, though perfectly fine, couldn't save the meal. We all loved the yogurt layered with nuts; my mother assumed that the restaurant made it, but it turned out to be good old Total, my favorite, indeed imported from Greece but also available at Trader Joe's and Andronico's.
Small, faintly gritty cups of Greek coffee sent us out into the misty night mildly dispirited. Carol and Stanley walked us to our car, parked in the city lot on Vallejo, whose spaces are enlivened with stenciled fortune cookie phrases. We wanted to show Stanley that our stall's fortune was "Friends long absent are coming back to you."
As I drove my parents home, my mother summed the evening up: "The company," she said, "was better than the food."
Now Trending
2013 - Food & Drink
