Hope Floats

This weekend I ate at the Acropol Inn on Grand Ave. I had been there one other time with our singles dining group from church so I knew that they had decent food and I was in the mood for something greek that wasn't dino's gyros (which are tasty, if you have a hankerin' for a gyros)

I had a sinking feeling that when I walked in that I might be in trouble. There was no one in the place. Which made the awful screeching greek music even louder. The gracious hostess didn't quite know where to sit me (too many choices I guess) so I suggested a table by the window?

I ordered the beef kabob which comes with this spinach phylo thing, this cheesy phylo thing and some other side dish. It sounded good. (Yep, I'm one with the -kpotia type dishes, just can't spell them)

Unfortnately, the waiter came out after five minutes and announced they didn't have any beef.

Which made me laugh. I think the waiter though I was slightly nuts anyhow. I laughed mostly because of my goddaughter Nadine's and my own fascination with watching my big fat greek wedding a hundred times all I could think of was the line "you don't eat no meat - we make lamb"

So I swapped it for the lamb kabob. Could hurt to try lamb again, particularly in the hopes that it was better than that lamb shank thing at disney a month or so ago.

They have a rather ordinary soup (I think it was supposed to be egg-lemon, but sadly that too is ruined for me by the tasty egg-lemon soup served by dunton house restaurant in arlington heights.)

They have a delicious salad dressing that apparently you can buy by the bottle. Unfortunately the empty restaurant and Kitchen Nightmares on friday night coupled with my inability to eat 1/2 the salad when I thought of the restaurant from Kitchen Nightmares serving blech/rotten salad.

The lamb was slightly chewy but I imagine if they had cooked it correctly I probably would have found the cut quite nice. It was a little hard to chew and they had way too many onions. Also the cheesy phylo thing was hard to cut into, but the eggy/other caseroles and the spinach phylo thing provided more than enough food.

At one point the hostess came out to check if everything was okay. I said yes mostly because while I did have issues with the lamb, I just didn't really want to wait for something else, or get my food tampered with...c'mon you know that wait staff just dred those complaining customers.

She was sort of ringing her hands and looking out the window. So I asked if this was typical. She shared that her husband had been gravely ill for four months and they had to close the restaurant and that this was one of the first weekends they were opened. Alas, with the economy and people not going out to eat, the glut of restaurants on grand avenue, and the fact that no one probably knew they were opened again, business was not doing well. (Probably more telling reason for running out of beef than I even imagined.)

I rather appreciate eating at family establishments rather than chain restaurants but there seem to be so few of them in the suburbs of the twin cities and the others seem to be out of my price range. I feel for family business. You've got to keep a livelihood, but when faced with grave illness, these people chose family over business. God has healed the husband thankfully and they returned to reopen the restaurant. Probably I'm making more of a romance than this really was but you've got to believe that they just have the restaurant and their family. I'm sure that they may have had to let chefs and staff go. I'm sure that they have hope that they can stay afloat. I hope they do. Hope does float. At least it does in the movies.