My friends from work took Robert and I out for Greek food last Friday night to get us excited for our upcoming vacation to Greece. We went to a little tiny Greek taverna on lower Queen Anne called Panos Kleftiko. We started out with a bottle of retsina wine. Retsina is a white wine, made only in Greece, that has been resinated with pine tree resin giving it a distictive piney or sappy taste. Some people hate it. Robert and I both loved it. We then moved on to dinner which was really just made up of a number of appetizers (chosen from the four pages of appetizers on the menu!) We shared tzatziki, hummus and kopanisti (a feta cheese spread flavored with peperoncini and mint and topped with slivered almonds and grapes.) We also had marinated octopus, which was lemony and surprisingly tender, Greek sausages flavored with fennel and herbs, meatballs in a cinnamon-y tomato sauce, and yigantes (giant broad beans in tomato sauce). A large horiatiki salata and plenty of pitas rounded out the meal. Everything was delicious and matched perfectly the retsina (as with ouzo, retsina tastes even better with Greek food.) My favorites were the kopanisti and the octopus simply because I hadn’t eaten them before. I have a feeling there will be a strong Greek presence on elliemay.com over the next couple months so stay tuned.