Restaurant Review #134: The Great Greek, Studio City

The Great Greek is known for its festive ambience--at dinnertime, live music and dancing energize the place. But if quiet and calm is more your speed, visiting The Great Greek at lunchtime is the way to go. Either way, you'll hear "Opa!" over and over.

The menu features everything you'd expect to find at a Greek restaurant--hummus, pita, dolmas, schwarmas, and more--plus a few things you might not expect, like a flaming cheese plate and Greek soup.

For $14.95 at lunchtime (per person, with a 2 person minimum) you can enjoy a feast of 13 items that covers all parts of the menu. I was really in the mood for a schwarma, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to satisfy 13 curiosities. They offer a comparable meal at dinnertime--it costs a few dollars more, and I'm not sure if the items are the same.

You'll start off with a Greek salad of cucumbers, red onions, tomatoes, red and green peppers, kalamata olives, feta cheese, and romaine lettuce. Everything about this salad is perfect, except for the mealy pink tomatoes that no self-respecting tomato lover would eat. But those are easily avoided. The richly flavored olives are particularly good. The salad alone would constitute a meal for some, but 12 more dishes remain.



Five small plates of various dips arrive next. Tzatziki sauce, a yogurt sauce with cucumbers, was a hit with me, but probably won't win you over if you don't already like yogurt.



I've eaten more than my share of hummus. Hummus generally consists of just a few main ingredients: chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, salt, and maybe a bit of lemon juice and garlic. Every recipe uses a different balance of these basic ingredients though, so whether one recipe is better than the other is really a matter of personal taste. I wasn't a fan of this hummus, since I couldn't taste the tahini.

When I was in high school, one of my friends who often ate hummus for lunch told me that hummus was made with chickpeas, water, and cumin. I actually made hummus using this recipe--and ate it. As if that wasn't enough, I didn't think to use a food processor, so I made it in the blender. Dry, flavorless, chunky-style hummus. Mmmmmmm.



This dip was unfamiliar to me (and I can't remember the name--I should start taking notes!). It tasted a bit like cream cheese, or shrimp, or crackers, or paint. I hated it, but my friend loved it. So don't take my word for it.



As you can tell, presentation is well-considered in every dish, especially with regard to color. I was particularly impressed by the rainbow confetti appearance of this dish. The dish means to showcase the large, flat, white beans and a thin, tomatoey sauce that covers them, but it also includes a whole lot of onion and bell pepper slices. I never understand why restaurants put raw onions in their dishes. Does anyone eat them? I enjoyed the beans and the sauce, mainly for their unfamiliar flavors, but you definitely have to like beans to like this dish. I only sort of like them.



Melitzanosalata, which seems to be the Greek name for baba ghanouj, is much like hummus but with eggplant instead of chickpeas and tahini. Personally, I've never liked the slimy texture of pureed eggplant--but here again, decide for yourself.


Kind of like tapas



The Great Greek makes a big deal about its pita bread, which is flown in from Chicago. Why they need to fly it halfway across the country, and how they keep it so incredibly fresh while they do it, is beyond me, but it is darn good--thin, fluffy, buttery, warm goodness.



Moussaka, according to the Great Greek, is the national dish of Greece. If that is the case, I feel sorry for the Greeks. According to some recipes I found online, this dish can contain one or more spices that an American might associate with pumpkin pie, like cinnamon and allspice. Indeed, when I first tasted this moussaka, I likened it to a meaty version of the Thanksgiving dessert. As I ate more, I thought it tasted like turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie rolled into one. The mushy, casserole-like consistency only added to my impression.

Maybe I'm crazy, since the dish is supposed to contain things like eggplant, tomatoes, and ground beef or lamb--none of which have ever found their way to my Thanksgiving table.



If you've ever had dolmas before and wondered what the hell you were eating and why, give them a second chance. Grocery store dolmas tend to be cold and have some sort of dull rice filling wrapped in tasteless leaves. The Great Greek's dolmas have a ground meat filling, a surprisingly pleasant tangy flavor, and are served warm. These were the first dolmas I enjoyed eating.



Fried calamari can only get so exciting, especially when there's no interesting dipping sauce, just a lemon wedge. The calamari were tender, though not as tender as La Curva's, but the breading was much too salty.



This was another lackluster dish. It reminded us of Hamburger Helper.



The meatballs, though unappetizing in appearance, were tasty because of an interesting combination of spices.



The spanakopita tasted more like cheese than spinach, which was more than fine with me. The only other version of this dish that I've tried is the frozen one from Trader Joe's, and I'm pleased to say that this restaurant version was indeed better. The only downside here was that the bottom layer of phyllo got soggy quickly.



Greek food is salty, so save room for a sweet dessert. We had the galaktobouriko, a sweet custard sandwiched between two layers of phyllo dough. The outside, with the phyllo, pistachios, and honey, tasted like baklava--but since it was just on the outside, it wasn't sickeningly sweet. The custard was soft and not too sweet. My only complaint is that the dessert wasn't thoroughly heated, and it was just a little warm in some spots while still being cool in others.



Greek coffee, like middle eastern coffees, is incredibly intense. It's made from coffee beans ground to a fine powder and it's unfiltered, meaning that the bottom third of the cup is filled with undrinkable coffee sludge. The coffee came with a supersweet piece of rose-flavored soft candy that was just like Turkish delight, though it had a different name.



The indoor patio is well-insultated from the noise of Ventura Boulevard, and much brighter than the main dining room at lunchtime.



The service was friendly, polite, and consistent. They were happy to box up our many leftovers. We had two different servers over the course of our meal.

During the day, you can park for free on nearby residential streets for up to two hours. We didn't have any trouble finding a good spot.

If you've been to The Great Greek, how was your experience? Leave a comment!

The Great Greek
13362 Ventura Blvd
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
818-905-5250
11:30am-11:00pm daily
Map
Great Greek Menu

Restaurant Review #66: Panera Bread

Asiago bagel

First, a confession: I used to work here. That means you get both my former employee bias and my former employee inside scoop.

Working at Panera was one of the best jobs I ever had, and one of the most fun. At the end of the day, the employees get to take home whatever baked goodies are left over, as well as any panini. There are no preservatives in the baked goods, so they don't last long--but the bread and bagels freeze very well. Whatever the employees don't take home gets donated--and I assure you, there is still plenty of stuff left to donate--more than gets used, oftentimes. After you've worked there a few weeks, you usually don't take home a whole lot of food.

I still enjoy their bagels, and buy them now, even though I ate oodles of them for free while I worked there. That's saying a lot. Bagel purists may not like these bagels. They are all sourdough-based and don't have a very hard exterior--and these traits are precisely why I prefer them over more traditional bagels. Panera's bagels also big enough to make for a filling meal.

Panera also sells an assortment of cookies and pastries, almost all of which I don't like very much. Why? I think they taste funny, probably because unlike the bread, everything else Panera makes is chemical-laden. The ingredient list on the special sauces that go on the sandwiches is about 50 items long. This is common nowadays, but not how I like to eat. I've strayed far enough into the land of organic foods that I can really taste the difference between something with just a few ingredients and something with way too many. The meats and cheeses are the usual mass-pressed variety, and everything comes from Sysco or the equivalent, so it's not the greatest quality, but it's definitely not McDonalds. Given what they have to work with, almost everything is quite tasty, and suitable for most people, even me. Panera is considered to be a fast-casual restaurant: not quite fast food, not quite a real restaurant. It's definitely a few notches above Subway and Quiznos.

I also have an issue with the soups, because I've gotten sick from them on multiple occasions. If you've ever gotten sick at Panera and you had the soup, the soup was probably the culprit. Don't eat the soup, and you should be fine. If you don't get sick from the soup, consider yourself lucky, because the french onion soup is damn tasty. And if, like me, you like to soak wads of bread in your soup, you're in luck, because you get a wad of French bread with every bowl of soup. Another thing I'm a fan of is the You Pick Two combination, where you can have a soup and a salad, a soup and a half sandwich, or a salad and a half sandwich.

What do I recommend? Well, as someone who has eaten every menu item created before January 2004, let me tell you. The frontega chicken panini and the portabella mushroom panini are great. However, the new Wilshire and 5th location in Santa Monica seems to be lacking the requisite panini grill that makes the bread nice and crunchy, so I've stopped ordering them. The bacon turkey bravo is also a very tasty sandwich--it's served on tomato basil bread, which has a bit of cinnamon steusel topping sprinkled over the crust. It also has Panera's yummy signature sauce (yes, that stuff I was complaining about being all chemically). I also like the lemonade and the cheesily named IC Honeydew drink. My favorite bagels are the popular cinnamon crunch, asiago, and the nine grain. My favorite breads are the French baguette and the tomato basil loaf. If you were wondering, "Why asiago?" it's because asiago was the only cheese that adhered to the bagel rather than sliding off when it was cooked.

On the other hand, there are also some things I do not recommend (in addition to my warnings about the soup, above). The tuna salads and chicken salads are pretty disgusting. The Ciabatta bread is pretty tasteless. I thought that the brownies were the most chemical-tasting of all the bakery items, though I knew some people who loved them. The turkey artichoke panini doesn't taste like artichoke at all, unless the person who prepared your panini put extra artichoke spinach dip sauce on your sandwich, and they probably didn't, because you're only supposed to use a certain amount of each ingredient. The panini are pre-made each morning because it takes a while to heat them up, so don't try to special order a panini. It ain't happenin. The other sandwiches are made to order, though.

Panera is a pretty decent company. They originated in St. Louis as St. Louis Bread Company. They have a 6 hour paid employee training session before you start work where you learn about the company, learn what you'll be doing on your first day, and get to sample lots of their food. They pay pretty well, but negotiating your start rate up is key, since the amount of raise you are eligible for is dependent on how well your store does. Raises are offered every six months, which sounds good, but in an industry where the average employee only stays at his or her job for four months, that's not so good. At my store, which was a second tier store in terms of performance, I would have only been eligible for a 10-cent-per-hour raise after six months. That sucks. However, almost everyone at my restaurant had been there for longer than six months--some had been there for years, at least, until we got a jerk of a manager in who seemed intent on getting rid of all the old employees, either by firing them outright or by cutting their hours. This manager got fired in less than a year on discrimination charges--it seems that Panera takes their non-discrimination clause seriously (I don't think that whoever hired him could have known he would make inappropriate comments to my lesbian friends). Panera employees, in my experience, are somewhat slow and prone to messing up your order, but are very friendly and apologetic.

I had some really great managers though, minus the one I just mentioned. Many of the employees were from low-income backgrounds and lived check to check (when you've got a kid and you make $7.50 and the dad is gone, no matter how responsible you are, it's hard to make ends meet). If it was the end of the month and you were broke, a manager would buy your meal for you, no problem. As it was, we got a 65% discount on meals. Apparently most similar restaurants only give a 50% discount, though I don't know if that's true. I always thought restaurant employees got to eat for free. If you have to have a low wage job though, working at a restaurant is really the way to go. They pay more, it's more interesting and busy than most retail, you save a ton on groceries, and you'll never starve.

So why did I quit? Well, when you have a college degree, it's extra-hard to deal with customers who think you are unintelligent and to stomach the barage of well-meaning comments from friends and family about what you ought to be doing for a living instead. I don't think I'm above cleaning bathrooms and making sandwiches. I really liked making sandwiches.

But I am glad I don't have to wear that khaki Panera cap anymore.

Tips:

The bagels are all baked very early in the morning before the store opens, so get there early to get the freshest bagels and get them before they run out. This applies to everything else as well--if it's out, it's out. They can't make more. Every afternoon the dough for the next day's breads, bagels, and cookies is delivered. There is no extra stuff on hand, nor is there anyone there during the day who knows how to bake it properly, except possibly the managers, who are usually overwhelmed with things to do.

All or most locations have free WiFi.

The company policy is to let all guests stay as long as they want as long as you buy something. We had patrons who spent hours and hours in our store with only a cup of coffee and a bagel, and that was okay. No one will harrass you. There are no clocks. They want you to lose track of time and relax.

Coffee refills are free, but the coffee isn't that great. It is, however, brewed fresh every two hours (in theory) from freshly ground coffee beans.

The blended coffee drinks are made with lots and lots of half and half, so if you're cutting calories, don't drink them. The IC honeydew does not contain half and half, however, and is much better for you.

Please don't try to pronounce "croissant" with a French accent. You are not French, and I know it. You sound like a pompous ass. And if you are going to insist on this ridiculous affection, I will definitely expect you to start pronouncing "Los Angeles" in Spanish.

The pre-recorded jazzy elevator music they play sucks and at my store was the most frequent customer complaint (aside from, "you screwed up my order!").

You can get your bread sliced thick or thin. You can also get your bagel "bread-sliced," which will give you lots of fun bagel strips to dip in cream cheese.

Two small cream cheeses cost the same as an entire tub, which is the equivalent of four small cream cheeses.

The orange juice is not fresh-squeezed.

The sign in the window that says "Now Accepting Applications" is always up and does not indicate that the company actually needs to hire anyone. There is some law that says that companies have to take job applications at all times even if they aren't hiring. Incredibly silly. This doesn't explain Panera's prominent signage to me, though.


French Toast Bagel (similar to cinnamon crunch, but not as sweet)


Panera Bread

501 Wilshire Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90403
Tel: (310) 566-3080

8647 South Sepulveda Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Tel: (310) 641-9200

12131 Ventura Boulevard
Studio City, CA 91604
Tel: (818) 762-2226

2733 Pacific Coast Highway
Torrance, CA 90505
Tel: (310) 517-0324

Restaurant Review #41: Marrakesh, Studio City

Dining room

I went to Marrakesh on a word-of-mouth recommendation and because I was in the Valley. I had no idea what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised over and over again throughout my meal.

When we arrived around 6:00 on a Sunday, the restaurant was pretty empty, and it wasn't until about 8:00 when we left that a respectable number of tables were filled. I couldn't see the whole restaurant from where I was sitting though, only about ten tables. We didn't like the table they first seated us at--we wanted a cozy corner booth, and didn't see why we had been seated so close to the only other party in an otherwise empty room. We switched to another table without any problems. That was the only thing that went wrong the whole night, and it wasn't even a real problem.

A meal at Marrakesh starts out with a hand-washing ceremony. I was a little thrown off, since I didn't really know what to do, but basically everyone puts their hands in the center of the table over a dish and a server comes by with a large, ornamental container and gently pours water over everyone's hands. Then you're given a towel to dry your hands with.

The servers are outfitted in traditional dress, and there are no menus. Everything is served family style, and there are about four options for each of several courses, including a lot of lamb and fish dishes. Our server took care to present all of our options slowly and carefully and to make recommendations since we weren't familiar with the restaurant or with Moroccan cuisine. None of the options presented were vegetarian-friendly, so if you are or will be dining with a vegetarian, call ahead to find out of they can accommodate you. Since the service was so good throughout the meal, I wouldn't be surprised if they were willing to put something special together.


Appetizer plate

My favorite part of the appetizer plate was the reddish mush you see, which was an eggplant and tomato (I think) dish. I also liked the cucumbers and the beets, and, not surprisingly, I didn't like the carrots (I never do). I'm a big fan of variety, so I liked that there were a lot of different things on the plate. The only problem was that for me, this plate alone could have filled me up. I had to pace myself, especially on the eggplant. Our meal also started off with a simple tomato-based lentil soup. Servers come around to serve bread out of a large, traditional basket and encourage you to take as much as you want. I was afraid they would charge $5 per hunk when the bill came, but they didn't charge extra, so eat all the bread you want. I think the bread was French bread, which isn't a surprise since Morocco was a French colony.


Lamb kebabs and couscous

I pretty much left the lamb kebabs to my friend, since chunks of meat are just too carnivorous for me. I poked at the couscous, but it was too dry, as usual. I settled for eating the potatoes and raisins.

Around this time, a blonde belly dancer came out and danced for several songs. I found it a bit awkward--you're supposed to look, and yet at the same time, I felt like I wasn't supposed to look. Since there were only three parties seated in our area of the restaurant, I didn't want to ignore her, but at the same time, watching a woman dance sexily for random men doesn't appeal to my feminist convictions. Also, she invited me to get up and dance, which I really didn't understand, since I would have looked like a moron in my street clothes next to her elaborate costume and I didn't know a thing about belly dancing.


Honey lamb

The meat, served in a thin, sweet sauce, was very tender and juicy. I loved the plump raisins that came with this dish as well as with the lamb kebabs.


Fish

The fish was the least exciting dish of the evening--the texture was a bit chewy (it was more of a fish steak than a fillet--I prefer a fillet, and that is what Americans are more accustomed to eating), and the tangy olives really didn't go with the other muted flavors in the dish. My favorite thing on this plate was the potatoes.

Not pictured is the most spectacular dish of the evening--a meat pie the size of a dinner plate. (The white powdered sugar topping and the very low lighting made it impossible to photograph well, even with a flash.) More like a dessert than a meal, this dish consisted of finely shredded chicken mixed with cinnamon and sugar (and some other ingredients I couldn't identify) encased in a thin, flaky pastry covered in powdered sugar. I'm not much of a meat eater, but I enjoyed this dish a lot since it didn't taste meaty and the chicken flavor was disguised by the other flavors--the chicken seemed more like it was there for substance, texture, and nutrition--it didn't taste like meat.


Baklava and hot tea

Possibly the best baklava I've ever had--there is a huge difference between fresh, soft, honey-oozing baklava served slightly warm in a restaurant and even the best store-bought baklava, which is usually a lot crisper and often has more layers of phyllo (or maybe it just seems that way because the layers aren't as soft). The strong, sweet, mint tea was also excellent, and surprisingly, they came back to pour us more! They also served us a fruit basket, which I imagine we were supposed to eat from if we wanted, but I didn't feel like I was supposed to eat it, maybe because it was so perfectly color coordinated--purple grapes, a green apple, a red apple, and an orange.

My friend and I both agreed that it had been a great meal. The food was very good, the servers treated us extremely well, and the restaurant had a great atmosphere and a unique meal format. It was even quiet enough to have a conversation, and the cozy booths make a great start to a romantic evening. My only complaint is that the tables are very low, almost the same height as the bench seats, which makes eating a bit awkward. I would definitely go back, though. I've been to over one hundred restaurants in LA, and very, very few of them have good food, reasonable prices, good atmosphere, and are conducive to conversation--most places are missing one or two of these components. We also had tons of food and tons of leftovers for a very reasonably price. Make sure to go with a big appetite!

Marrakesh
13003 Ventura Blvd,
Studio City, CA 91604
Tel. (818) 788 - 6354