After a slow start, I happy to say that I am now doing very well with my New Year’s resolution to dine in a wider variety of restaurants. It’s been nearly a month since Robert and I have been to our regular neighborhood pub! This weekend, we returned to two great places: Dinette and Panos Kleftiko. We had previously been to each of these restaurants only once, and, although I have written about both restaurants before, the food was good enough that I felt a brief update on each was warranted.
On Friday night, we met up with friends for dinner at Dinette. Dinette, if you remember from my last post, is a very charming Capitol Hill restaurant with a focus on European comfort foods and…toast! Yes, they have an entire section of the menu that is devoted to toast (think bruschetta, not plain old breakfast toast.) We chose three toasts for the table to share: smoked salmon with herbed mascarpone, rabbit rillets with apple and celery root slaw, and gorgonzola dulce with walnuts and balsamic glaze. For my dinner, I ordered the ricotta gnocchi in broth with squash, leeks and spinach. This dish is available in two sizes; I went with the smaller size, predicting, correctly, that what they call a small would be what I consider an appropriate portion size. The gnocchi were really light and delicious, and the accompanying broth was equally tasty. Garlicky and comforting, just what I was in the mood for. Robert ordered one of the nightly specials: lamb shepherd’s pie topped with potato and celery root puree. Heather ordered a butter lettuce salad with watermelon radishes and preserved lemon dressing, another dish offered in two sizes. She ordered the larger size, since it was to be her entree, and it was possibly the biggest plate of greens I have ever seen. Todd and David shared another one of the specials: “Pork for Two” (it actually had a much better-sounding, French name but I can’t remember what it was.) This dish consisted of Savoy cabbage parcels filled with pork, served in a light tomato sauce with polenta on the side. It looked really yummy. For dessert, we all split the flourless chocolate cake and the Maker’s Mark bananas foster. The food and the service were both excellent. Dinette is quickly becoming one of my neighborhood favorites. Perhaps I will have to add a sixth restaurant to my rotation. To top off the evening, we swung by Chapel for fancy cocktails.
On Saturday, in celebration of a couple of winter birthdays, my family went out to Panos Kleftiko, a tiny Greek tavern on lower Queen Anne Hill. Actually, Panos is not quite as tiny as it once was; they just added a second room so there is now twice the seating! This worked out well for us since it fills up pretty quickly and we were a large group of seven (they don’t accept reservations.) We ordered many of the same appetizers as I had during my last visit: pitas, tzatziki, kopanisti, marinated octopus and Greek sausages. The kopanisti is my favorite. I have a recipe for it, but mine never turns out as good as the one at Panos. Robert and I both had an Athenian salad for our dinner which is like a traditional Greek salad except that it has lettuce and the feta cheese is crumbled rather than sliced. My mom and sister both had the bread salad which was very good. The bread wasn’t soggy nor was it “tear your mouth to shreds” crunchy. My dad, brother and brother-in-law had a prawn entree, a lamb entree and a stuffed chicken entree respectively. I can’t remember the specifics about each but they looked good. The entrees all come with a salad, cooked carrots and a very small side of rice. Our wine choice for the evening was Naoussa Boutari, a favorite of my mom and dad’s. Boutari is one of the most famous wineries in Greece. The Naoussa Boutari wine is based on the indigenous xinomavro (”acid black”) grape. It is described as being a full bodied wine, but I thought it was somewhere more between light and medium bodied. As with most of the Greek wines I’ve tried, it went wonderfully with the food. All of the food at Panos, while a bit heavy on the oil, is very tasty. If you don’t like a lot of garlic, however, you might want to head over to Sushiland next door; Panos definitely doesn’t skimp on the garlic!