One night at Sofia’s Greek Bistro, owner and chef Litsa Manolis overheard two proud parents talking about their son’s music. An instant later, she sat down at their table, handed the young man her guitar and gave him an unprompted audition, where he confidently seized the room with a song. Just like that, he won a weekly gig. Like the food and the restaurant itself, this effortless moment came directly from Manolis’ arresting spirit of hospitality. It is contagious, authentically Greek, and a big part of why Sofia’s is the best new restaurant I tried in 2011.
With blue chairs and walls and bouzouki music in the background, the dining room evokes Greece and is warmed by Manolis’ joyful paintings. Open since October in the under-renovation Plantation Shopping Center at Glenwood and State streets, Sofia’s is a little hard to find. But it is gaining a following. Everyone my wife and I met there was won over by the engaged service and, especially, the food.
Mezedes (starters) are $7 and $8, or $16 for an impressive tour of the entire appetizer menu. Hummus is smooth, bright and lemony, and served with terrific warm pita, griddled crispy brown on one side and pillowy soft on the other. Also delicious on those pitas is the Hippie Dippie, an unusual spread of yogurt, feta and surprisingly welcome heat in the form of sriracha. The simple Feta Lee Lee is a cup of goat cheese in olive oil with oregano and kalamata olives. Nowhere is there a wasted, irrelevant garnish. The striking cucumber-yogurt tzatziki is somehow free of herbs — or color of any kind, for that matter — and still flavorful.
The standout appetizers are the spanakopita: warm, crackling phyllo dough with an indulgently rich spinach-feta-cream cheese filling. These are not tiny, standard-issue, straight-from-the-freezer turnovers. Sofia’s are fresh, handmade and perhaps the single-best savory pastry I have ever had. (The slightly-less-overwhelming tyropita are the same cheese filling, but without spinach, also included on the sampler.)
At every turn, this feels more like family dinner than restaurant food. So often we admire chefs when they know when just enough elements make a dish complete. Here, the cuisine is so simple, yet so fully realized, restraint is moot. Service is familial, too — remarkably giving and warm. The waitstaff know and believe in the food they are serving.
The appropriately titled “big fat gyro” ($6) will certainly attract attention, and it’s very good — roasted lamb shaved from a spool, shredded lettuce, tomato, onion and tzatziki on pita.
But the rotating nightly dinner specials, served after 5 p.m., are where the real work is being done. On Saturdays, the lamb with roasted potatoes ($18) is a rustic knob of braised Australian lamb leg, seasoned with lemon and garlic, and a good pile of potatoes in scant pan sauce. I would have like the meat a little juicier, or a little more of that sauce, but the flavors were true. On Wednesdays, the mythological portion of moussaka ($14) should not be missed. Something like a shepherd’s pie, Sofia’s version is ground beef with eggplant and onion in tomato sauce, with a thick cap of creamy bechamel, baked deep golden brown. Specials are served with a traditional Greek salad, a nice foil for the richness of the entrees. (A schedule of the nightly offerings is on the restaurant’s website.)
Just right with any or all of this is a glass of retsina ($6), dry Greek wine that carries the flavor of pine resin used to seal the casks, or a bottle of Alfa ($4), a light import beer in the style of Amstel.
By the end you will no doubt be too full, but you should take home some excellent baklava ($2.50) or do as we did, and stay for a Greek coffee ($3), shortbread cookies ($3) and a peanut-butter-cup-like tart called chokolakis ($3). Or go back again, as we plan to do.
Email Alex Kiesig: scene@idahostatesman.com
