My son and I went for breakfast at this new (and rather swank) bakery and restaurant in Greektown. He was in Greece last summer, and the memory of what he had there was still fresh in his mind.
Although we enjoyed our meal, my son was able to point out the deficiencies in the baked goods.
We had a galaktoboureko that was undercooked, turned out pale instead of a golden, crackly top.
When I bit into the ravani, i thought it was a bit stale, but my son pointed out that it’s supposed to be stale, but gets re-hydrated by pouring a lot of syrup on it. But they didn’t use nearly enough syrup.
A salad of bread rusks (think croutons), tomato and goat cheese was only ok. I was disappointed that instead of chopped tomato (or even cherry tomato) it was made with strained tomato and the goat cheese was fairly bland, lightly sprinkled on top.
A breakfast-y dish of fried chicken and loukamadas (I guess their own version of chicken-and-waffles) featured nicely cooked loukamadas accompanied by some nuggets of dark meat chicken that were not batter-dipped, but maybe dusted with a bit of flour or cornstarch to make them crispy before frying. The syrup was not too sweet, so it was a pretty satisfying dish.
There is an extensive lunch and dinner menu that looks very good. The interior dining area is quite beautiful and very comfortable.
I’m a fan of dusting as opposed to dipping in batter. You do lose a lot of fried bread, I admit, but the chicken flavor comes through much better – at least imho
It’s supposed to be a freshly baked but rather dry cake that is soaked in syrup.
If the galatoboureko wasn’t golden, it’s quite possible it wasn’t brushed with enough butter before baking. A lot of Greek bakeries in Canada and the States do not use enough butter or oil on their filo pastries before baking them.
The bread rusks should be imported Cretan rusks. They are called dakos, and can be purchased at Greek stores. They’re have a slightly different flavour , texture and shape from other European rusks.
We had dinner recently and like some of what we had a lot and the rest was good with one exception. The dinner came at the end of an exhausting day with a run to IKEA and we came out feeling well taken care of. We are intending to go back.
I sort of see most salad & dakos preps as a type of Cretan panzanella! I guess I typically prefer either a bruschetta/ crostini or a panzanella (even with Greek salad flavours) to a Cretan Dakos prep.
If there’s a Greek bakery that sells both bread and pastries near you, they also may sell them.
