Reviews
Foodie Award
Critic's choice Winner for Best Greek Restaurant
"I am Greek and visit there sometimes more than twice a week to get the best comfort food around," says one enthusiastic balloter of Greek Flame. This is another repeat winner for the readers. The food is impressively good and authentic.
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Orlando Sentinel
November 4, 2007
The party, the food - it's all here
There is a perfectly good explanation why one of my dining companions is across the room dancing on top of a table. But I'll come back to that.
Taverna Opa is a new Greek restaurant out of South Florida. It has taken up residence on the second level of Pointe Orlando, an International Drive shopping and dining complex that has undergone a reconstruction in the past year and a half, much of it in its dining venues. Since the middle of 2006 we've seen Capital Grille, The Grape, Tommy Bahama's Tropical CafeMaggiano's and The Oceanaire Seafood Room open. All are chains -- indeed Capital Grille has since become part of the Darden family of restaurants -- but each is new to the Orlando market, and the Pointe location is so far the only one in the area.
Taverna Opa is part of a very small chain -- only four locations, all in Florida. The Pointe Orlando Taverna Opa is the second franchised restaurant.
There are some things you should know about Taverna Opa before we go any further. First, if you're the type of person who is uncomfortable in noisy restaurants, you may as well stop reading right now. It's possible that this place is louder than even Hard Rock Cafe. Whenever the host stand is taken over by a disc jockey, it's a pretty good indicator that sign language will be your only chance at conversation.
Second, if you're offended by an undulating, scantily clad woman circulating among the tables, you'll have a problem here. Taverna Opa has a belly dancer-in-residence who sashays, swishes and swirls around the room at regular intervals. You might be more comfortable at the Hooters next door where the women are more demure.
And if you don't like the idea of people throwing handfuls of paper beverage napkins into the air as though they were gigantic confetti that will land on your head and in your food, perhaps you'll want to take a pass on this place.
But there's something else you should know about Taverna Opa: For all its emphasis on having fun, it is quite serious about its food. The Greek dishes here are authentic, of high quality and served in ample portions. If you love good Greek food, and aren't opposed to having a good time while you eat it, you should experience Taverna Opa.
You'll find items you're familiar with from other Greek restaurants, such as mousaka, pastitsio and dolmades, but the menu also has some things a little more unusual. One of those, the lamb ribs ($7), was a favorite appetizer. They looked much like any barbecued ribs you might have had, but these had meat that fell readily from the bone with that wonderful hint of gaminess in the flavor, tamed here with a lemon sauce.
I also liked the Greek country style sausage ($5), grilled and served with red and green grilled peppers. And taramosalata ($4), a creamy dip with a salty taste from fish roe, served with herb-crusted pita bread.
Saganaki ($9), Greek cheese that is traditionally served flaming was preflamed and brought to the table as merely a hard slab of cheese, a bit of a disappointment.
Entrees are listed under the unfortunate heading "Greece on your plate." One of my guests chose the mousaka ($12), an enormous block of eggplant, potatoes and beef layers topped with a thick bechamel. A very nice rendition of this Greek regular.
Another guest chose the thallasino ($36), an ambitious seafood dish that resembled something along the lines of a cioppino. It featured a large skillet filled with a lobster tail, shrimp, scallops, mussels, squid, crab legs and a grouper fillet in a broth of white wine flavored with lemon and garlic and tinged with tomatoes. All of it was wonderful.
I had a more pedestrian beef brochette ($18), but only in terms of its preparation. It was made with beef tenderloin, big chunks grilled to a lovely medium-rare, sprinkled with herbs and served with peppers and onions.
I also enjoyed the slow roasted lamb ($18), lamb shoulder cooked on the bone, tender and flavorful, served with lemon potatoes and mixed vegetables.
Desserts were also quite good, none more so than the unusual house-made yogurt ($5), which had the texture of meringue but a tangy taste that was tempered by sweet honey, all dotted with walnuts. Galaktoboureko ($5) was a big block of cake with a custard filling. And, of course, there was gooey sweet baklava ($5).
And there was ouzo. But that's not the reason my friend is dancing on the table. It's just that a tabletop is the logical place to dance once everyone has stopped dancing Zorba-like with their arms around each other's shoulders circling the room in a Greek conga kick line.
There is a lot of table dancing here. Some people are coaxed up by the belly dancer, others are pulled up by staff members and servers, those who aren't busy tossing fistfuls of napkins into the air. Other people just jump up on the tables on their own, caught up in the exuberance of the moment.
The decor is warehouselike and spacious. But the only thing you really need to know is that the tables are really sturdy. So go ahead and dance.
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Orlando Weekly Article
September 27,2007
Mediterranean meals in a Dionysian setting
By Faiyaz Kara
The extreme makeover underway at Pointe Orlando has given rise to a number of upscale chains inside the sprawling entertainment complex – Tommy Bahama’s,
Capital Grille and the Oceanaire Seafood Room to name but a few. But the latest, a grand whitewashed edifice at the very heart of the Pointe, sits like the Parthenon atop an Acropolis of tourist dollars, its aim to attract the hungry to its temple of Dionysian, not Athenian, feasts.
And vacationers will, undoubtedly, eat this place up. The platters of Greek and Mediterranean specialties are first-rate, but the food takes a back seat to the atmosphere which, for the most part, resembles a Mykonos discotheque more than it does a quaint Aegean taverna.
Here, ladies who are not so big, nor fat, nor Greek, gyrate atop tables to thumping beats; belly dancers perambulate around the octagonal dining room urging dorks to dance; and the raucous clapping, napkin-tossing and repetitive shouts of “Opa!” distract even the most focused conversationalists. A place to dine on a first date it’s not, but for birthdays and celebrations, there’s no better place.
Dinner began with a 20-something waiter clad in black scurrying to my table with mortar and pestle in hand. In it were a few simple ingredients – chickpeas, garlic, thyme and olive oil – which I was encouraged to mash into a rustic chunky hummus. Quite the clever (and labor-reducing) tactic to get diners immediately immersed into the Opa experience, but, more importantly, the hummus and warm pita bread made for a uniquely fresh complimentary appetizer. Such appetizers (or meze) comprise half of the enormous menu, a concept not unlike that of Spanish tapas. The keftedes ($4), a hot meze plate of three broiled balls of ground beef, were an herbaceous trio thanks to the liberal usage of oregano. The meatballs are served naked but, surprisingly, they didn’t need a starchy accompaniment.
A flutter of napkins rained down on my table just as I took a bite of saganaki cheese ($9). It seems that the servers are prone to random yelps of “Opa!,” necessitating a chuck of serviettes. Nevertheless, the big salty slab of fried kefalotyri cheese was enjoyably chewy, and a splash of lemon provided a righteous zing. To my amazement, the cheese, layered with metaxa brandy, wasn’t flambéed tableside as part of the spectacle. “The servers just aren’t experienced enough yet, and I don’t want to run the risk of patrons leaving with singed eyebrows,” the owner openly confided.
There’s no chance of such a conflagration with the mussels and ouzo ($8). The mollusks were huge, and the tomato-basil-oregano sauce was huge on flavor. The licorice essence of ouzo, however, wasn’t as pronounced as hoped; in fact, I could barely taste it all.
Most of the entrees are borne out of the wood-fired grill, but if you’re a sucker for moussaka ($12), the version offered here was just average. Layers of roasted eggplant, potatoes, ground beef and béchamel couldn’t compensate for the lack of seasonings, plus the dish was served tepid. The meat platter ($23) is truly a carnivore’s delight, but when mine arrived sans gyros, I was duly compensated for the oversight with complimentary shots of ouzo. “Opa!” indeed. Back to the platter, the soft, luscious cube of beef tenderloin was as good as I’ve ever tasted; I just wish they’d serve more than one cube. All the meats – pork loin, chicken fillet and the lamb chop – were infused with a lemony flavor and came served with spears of lemon potatoes and green beans. As you can probably surmise, lemon is a primary ingredient here, which appealed to my palate just fine. Gyros notwithstanding, a dollop of creamy tzatziki was all that was lacking.
Honeyed layers of phyllo pastry elevate the baklava ($5), best enjoyed with a demitasse of Greek coffee ($3.25); sokolatina ($6) is a mind-bogglingly rich mousse cake and the ultimate chocolate indulgence.
Even the most self-possessed of patrons can’t help but get caught up in Opa’s frenzied scene – “fun with a capital F,” says their website. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself atop a table, howling to the gathered and channeling your inner coyote ugly.
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