It claims to be the best Greek Restaurant in Stillwater, a claim that
might be true since I'm not entirely sure there are any other truly and
primarily greek restaurants in stillwater? I'd say a closer description
might be that Aristo's stands for "ain't Christo's", which might be
more apt since my friends and I really wanted to go to Christo's in St Paul tonight but alas they were closed for a private party.I had never dined at this restaurant and knew other friends who like it (not the ones I dined with) so I'll also say that while I found the food okay, I probably won't make a special trip to the restaurant again based on some hit or miss items that aren't really deal-breakers but for the price of the food, there are other restaurants on the "list in my head" that I would want to try first...or instead.
Among our group we had:
Saganaki (Flaming Cheese): Okay, my friends humored me as I always wanted to order this but it's not something you can really order if you are dining alone without totally calling attention to the fact that both you are eating alone with a big OPA! exclaimation point AND that is a whole lot of cheese for one person to eat. It was good...in a small amount. Too many seeds in the lemon got all over the cheese and well...it was fun but the waitress was a little timid lighting the cheese on fire and the OPA! too was just a little flat.
Calamari: a little too much breading but seasoned well and not ozvercooked. Pretty decent.
Salad with dinner: Those had to be the saddest salads I've seen - including the ones that I had on my dinner tray when I had to stay overnight in the hospital. The lettuce looks fresh but maybe a little watery. They had two small pieces of cucumber, one lone olive, a sliver of tomato and some red onion. And a little plastic cup of greek dressing.
Avgolemono (Egg Lemon Soup) - Sadly I've had better soup. Just did not have all that great of a taste - not really chicken not really lemon...I had a few spoonfuls and felt kind of bad wasting it.
Gyros Plate: Good portion of veggies, rice and gyros. The Gyros meat had a decent flavor. Maybe was sliced a bit thinly but not really that greasy or over cooked. The pita as cut into too small of triangles to make a proper bite and the Tzatzaki sauce could have used more garlic or flavor - it was more like sour cream. It came with rice which didn't have that much flavor either.
Taste of Greece Platter - had gyros (see above), dolmades - which were cooked well and had a nice flavor of ground beef rice and herbs and some kind of tomato sauce. Spanakopita (phylo, spinach, dill, onion and feta) was good but maybe needed a bit less spinach and more feta. There also was a large square of pastitito (greek lasagna - which was tasty but just too much food)
I have to admit that I had a better time with my friends than partaking of the food. It all was edible but just really kind of uninspiring. Maybe I had played it up in my head a bit more. It's not terrible but I just wasn't that impressed.
I was impressed by our waitress. I appreciate when they actually have a personaility and conversation and aren't just saying "may I take your order" by some kind of rote rehearsed line. She did take a little long to give us our bills and refills of drinks but not terrible...for a small place.
All in all I think my pleasure stemmed more from the conversation and time spent with friends than the food itself.
Two stars of five (mostly for some pretty decent service)
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