These Greeks bear the gift of good food
For 20 years, Efthymios (Tim) and Georgia Athanasiadis ran Center House of Pizza in Brighton Center. Then, more than a year ago, they turned the place inside out, renamed it Esperia Grill & Rotisserie, and reopened as an authentic Greek kouzina. It sits back from the main street, tucked beside a Dunkin' Donuts.
"The way we cook here," says Tim, "that's the way we cook at home. Nothing different." He comes from Katerini, in northern Greece; she's from Kalamata in the south. "Greek people, they like their food cooked," adds Georgia. "They will not eat crispy crunchy vegetables, or rare meat." So you get long-cooked, olive-colored green beans infused with tomatoes and oil in a dish made around the Mediterranean, and a shank of lamb ($14.95) that might have cooked for four hours.
Esperia does a brisk take-out business, some from neighboring St. Elizabeth's Hospital; the local Greek community comes for specialties like taramosalata, the creamy pink spread made from red caviar and potato, and eggplant salad, a garlicky puree with vinegar and roasted peppers (both $4.50 for a half-pint; $6.50 for a pint).
Customers order at a counter, then sit down; if you stay, someone brings your meal. Tim keeps a careful eye on the room. That's not to say that you get your food in minutes. Georgia may be baking something to order, as she did my spanakopita one night ($4.95 as an appetizer; with soup and salad $7.95). She brought a hot, very crisp pie to the table. Instead of layering phyllo dough in a deep pan and cutting the large rectangle into squares, she had made an individual envelope wrapped around a creamy feta and spinach filling, which made four flaky edges. Yes, I had to wait, but so much good cooking isn't fast - it can't be and shouldn't be.
No one here skimps on garlic or salt. Georgia's moussaka ($11.95), with spicy ground beef, is topped with a puffy, eggy white sauce. Juicy chicken kebabs come in pairs (two skewers for $11.95), and with them you get a salad and two sides. Don't miss Greek-style potatoes, cooked in plenty of oil, lemon, and wild oregano from home. "When you smell it," says Georgia, "you feel like you're there in the field." She adds paprika, but essentially it's the same recipe her mother and three older sisters make.
Egg lemon soup, the famous avgolemono ($2.95 for a cup; $3.95 for a bowl), is nothing like any version I've tasted. This one is like porridge, thick with rice, bits of chicken, with the unmistakably good flavor of homemade broth. On the phone later, Georgia tells me that sometimes it thickens too much - obviously this was one of those times - but it's not supposed to be runny.
Gyros (pronounced "year-o") is made with pork or chicken carved off a vertical rotisserie ($6.25 without sides; $11.95 for the dinner). The highly seasoned pork, almost too salty for us - hard to do; we love salt - comes on a thick, handmade pita that has no pocket, along with the garlic-yogurt sauce, tzatziki, and a tomato and onion salad.
The Athanasiadises are constantly in motion and go at it seven days a week. She says, "We're not afraid of hard work." They probably don't know that the glass cruets of oil and vinegar on the table, a nice touch, are very sticky by the end of the day. But you forget quickly when you bite into Georgia's heavenly galaktobourika, sweet custard wrapped inside rectangles of golden phyllo, or her brilliant koulourakia, buttery, lightly sweetened cookies with the texture of shortbread and the shape of mini doughnuts.
Forget the neighboring coffee place. This is what doughnuts should taste like. 