Its all Greek to Me

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 8^th, 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.