We wanted to broaden our cultural
palate so we decided to try the annual Greek Festival hosted by St.
Sophia Greek Orthodox Church on Saturday, September 8th,
a beautiful Bellingham summer day. The atmosphere was lively with
traditional Greek music and many members of the Orthodox Church
serving street fair. The setup is a bit different. Instead of money
to buy food one needs to purchase tokens. Each menu item costs a
certain amount of tokens.
We started with dinner, heading
straight for the Gyro
vender we were ravenous for the shaved meat treat but to our
disappointment lamb was not on the menu. The options were beef,
chicken and sausage, disheartened we chose chicken. The gyro,
consisting of meat, onion and tomato, is served on pita bread with
tzatziki sauce.
The bread was good, great chew and held up to the wet ingredients
quite well. The meat was bursting with flavor and spice but was a bit
dry and needed the tzatziki. Gyros are simple and easy to make. I
often use this recipe
for the tzatziki sauce on Greek night at our house and I substitute
Isernio's Chicken Spinach and Feta sausage for the meat. When I have
the time I also make the pita
bread from scratch, which is also a simple process.
Next we sampled their Souvlaki
dinner plate which included a pork skewer, rice, salad and dolmathes.
The dolmathes
consisted of seasoned rice and meat wrapped in grape leaves and
steamed. Then it was topped with a citrus-chicken broth gravy. This
was the star of the plate.
The pork, like the chicken, was seasoned
well but dry. And the seasoned rice carried all the same citrus
flavor as in the dolmathes.
The salad was refreshing. Large chunks
of cucumber, tomato, olives, onion, bell pepper and feta were lightly
coated in a vinaigrette. A good palate cleanser between bites of the
rich food.
We moved on to desert. Trying the
Tiropita,
Spanakopita
and Greek doughnuts or Loukoumades.
The Tiropita, a cheese pastry, was rich and creamy with a perfect
flaky phyllo wrapper. The Spanakopita, my favorite, was the just as
rich as the first pastry with the balance of earthy spinach and salty
feta. The consensus favorite was the Loukoumades but it is hard to
compete with a deep-fried dough-ball dripping with honey and lightly
dusted with cinnamon.
Overall we spent $30 sampling the
various delights the Greek Festival had to offer. It was a pleasant
way to spend an afternoon broadening our cultural palate.