Lunch #2 - Gardens of Salonica (Greek)

September 25, 2008

Cuisine: Greek

Restaurant:

Gardens of Salonica

19 Fifth St NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413

Attendance: Eric, Tiff, Jarah, Zach, Nate, Ben, Kara, Andrea

Located in a turn-of-the-century storefront, this is a small, family-owned restaurant and deli with authentic food. Service was very, very slow but the food was pretty good and the menu has a lot of options. Excellent pita bread. Pretty reasonable. They rely on word-of-mouth and don't advertise.

Eric's Rating: 6.5 - Other than a few visits to "It's Greek to me" and "Christo's" my exposure to Greek dining is limited. With that I opted to stick with my "usual" and I tried their Gyro, mainly because I'm unable to pronounce anything else on the menu. Then again, I'm not really sure I know the correct pronunciation of "Gyro". I mean is it "Gee-row" or is ti more like "Gie-row"? I'm not sure either but I ordered it anyway and however I pronounced it the woman taking our order understood me. Once my order arrived (the service was a little slow) it was good, it had a good amount of schawarma and an adequate amount of tzatziki sauce. Overall I would say it was a better Gyro than Christos, but not as good as ones I've had at Greek to me.
Tiffany's Rating: 3 - I had authentic greek food in Greece and was hoping for something that was close to as good as what I had there. I got the pastitsio which I wasn't very impressed with. Barely any sauce and too sweet for me. It came with bean soup which wasn't very good. But the pita bread saved the whole meal, it was awesome.
Kara's Rating: 6 - Pastitsio was great, but the fish soup was rather revolting. Service was very slow - it was hard to get anyone to remember we were in the next room!
Zach's Rating: 8 - Jarah and I ordered an appetizer with spreads and pita bread, one was so garlicy that we proceeded to insist, and then demand, everyone else to eat it so we were not the only ones going back to the office with death breath!!!
Nate's Rating: 8 - As Eric says, the true measure of a Greek restaurant is its Gyro. Thus, the litmus test for Gardens of Salonica was passed with no problems. They Gyro was a good size and was tasty. The appetizers were good as well. The other dishes were well presented and looked like they would be great, except for Zach's, but that is because I hate grape leaves ;-)