It's Greek To Me

Say It With Me: Opa!

Last night we celebrated a friend's birthday at an "authentic" Greek restaurant in Dallas called Stratos.  I air quote "authentic" because, having spent a fair amount of time in Greece, I detected several Americanized innovations such as clean, working toilets and no swarms of flies orbiting the gyros.  But the noise music was right, as were the large gatherings of happy families shouting Opa! whenever a waiter set some cheese on fire.

There were twenty-four of us seated at a long, long table, making it impossible to converse with anyone other than your immediate table mates unless one was well-versed in ASL or  a seriously gifted lip reader.  Since I am neither I just looked up and waved vaguely to the far end of the table every so often.

Phyllo Donohue

We love our friends dearly but don't understand their affection for this particular dining destination.  Mexican food has basically six ingredients--tortillas, cheese, meat, salsa, beans and rice; depending on what form they take when plated, these items are called tacos, burritos, enchiladas, nachos, or tostadas.  The food at Stratos is somewhat in the same vein. There is phyllo dough, cheese, meat, spinach, rice, and grape leaves.  The menu consists of various shapes and combinations of these ingredients with foreign sounding and weirdly spelled names until you get to the baklava, which adds honey to the list.

The Belly of the Ball

The drinks must be concocted with a generous pour, because it wasn't long before what looked to be a suburban Jazzersize instructor emerged from a utility closet swathed in cheap orange fabric, finger cymbals, and harem pants to the wild applause and shrieking wolf whistles of an inebriated audience.  She had on some sort of embroidered crop top which enabled everyone to see her unsuccessfully roll her abdomen around in an awkward, Elaine Benes version of belly dancing.  She seemed a little self-conscious too, so she did what anyone else would do in that situation.  She wordlessly yanked people who had earlier self-identified as birthday celebrants up on top of their dining table, blindfolded them, and then gestured to the customers to jeer loudly as each hapless mope sort of shyly shimmied and stiffly moved their hips from side to side.  To me, it wasn't as much comical as it was puzzling. 

After her (seemingly endless) set, the music was turned up and even more merriment ensued, culminating in a long conga line of bachelorette parties, sorority sisters, a few moms and one rather dazed looking male soccer coach snaking through the packed restaurant performing the Syrtaki, perhaps the only Greek song and dance well-known to most Americans because it is the one Anthony Quinn stumbled through with a broken foot in the epic 1964 film Zorba the Greek. As the tempo churned faster and faster, the flushed faces of the now sweating flash mob showed traces of fear that they soon might be careening drunkenly into somebody's souvlaki.  Mercifully, the dance ended sans mishap.

Everyone in the packed restaurant was thoroughly enjoying themselves as evidenced by frequent shrieks of laughter and spontaneous rounds of drunken cheers.  I alone seemed to be the only one present not captivated by the entertaining offerings of this Mediterranean Renaissance Faire.  I guess I prefer anything flaming to be in the kitchen and the only belly I want to contemplate in a restaurant is my full one.

Opa!