| I knew we were going to have a lovely evening from the moment we arrived at Piato Greek House (1114 Edmonton Trail N.E., phone 277-3408). Aglow in bright spring sunshine, the restaurant welcomed us into its soothing Mediterranean ambience.
Husband and wife Dwayne and Alberta Ennest, who are also part owners of the nearby Diner Deluxe, opened Piato in mid-February after a couple of months of renovating the former Lombardo’s Italian restaurant. But don’t expect traditional Greek fare like skewers of chicken souvlaki, tzatziki and rice pilaf. Here, chef Dwayne has created a genre-bending menu. (Dwayne was the original chef at River Café and continues to cook at Diner Deluxe.)
"I wanted to do a cuisine in Calgary that hadn’t been elevated. Like Italian at Il Sogno and regional cuisine at River Café," says Ennest. "The Greek food we eat here is not what you eat in Greece – it’s bar food, it’s street food. So I wanted to make the real cuisine of Greece."
The menu is divided into meze – mini, palate-cleansing appetizers to share at $4 each; fagakia – medium-sized appetizers, soups and salads from $6 to $12; and Greek specialties from $8 to $16. Especially enticing of the myriad choices are a taramosalata of trout caviar (a popular dip on the southern Greek islands, made from olive oil, garlic, onions, bread and caviar), poached octopus salad with grilled bell pepper, frisée and arugula, and roast rabbit with chard and the traditional Greek avgolemono sauce of eggs, stock and lemon juice.
The grill section features such fantastic entrées as whole sea bream with warm green grape relish and wilted spinach ($20), grilled Cornish hen breasts with truffled forest mushroom polenta ($19) and a red lentil-crusted Arctic char with apple and roasted fennel mashed potatoes ($17). Since some of the entrées fly solo, a final section offers a few side dishes.
Our waiter was friendly and gave us an insightful tour of some of the more unusual items on the menu. Piato, the Greek word for plate, is a beautiful space with two spacious dining rooms and a third room for private parties, all with hardwood floors, fireplaces, lovely artwork and a few picnic tables mixed in among the white linen tables. I must say I was impressed by small details such as the flower-shaped serviettes from whose centre sprung our wine glasses, the picnic table near the kitchen entrance where olive bread is prepared and the quirky ice buckets – Rusinella olive oil tins.
For appetizers, we ordered the poached snails on barley rusks in a delicious cream sauce of apple juice, herbs, garlic and shallots, with cambazola cheese, red wine and sweet, oven-dried wine grapes ($10). They were exceptional and anything but your typical escargots. The spanakopitas were by far the best I’ve ever had – perfectly baked and crisp phyllo pastry stuffed with baby spinach, kasseri cheese (a sharp, salty, sheep’s milk cheddar) and spaghetti squash ($9). The cool, refreshing salad of black-eyed peas with dill, cilantro, lemon juice, walnuts and pomegranates ($7) offered a nice contrast to the warm, heavier appetizers and a nice change from the tired, ubiquitous lettuce salad.
My date ordered the succulent organic chicken breast stuffed with arugula and Sheppard’s farm feta on a bed of green lentils ($18). I chose the cooked-to-perfection Alberta lamb ribs with poached figs and a divine balsamic honey ($25). To conclude an exquisite meal, we ordered a refreshing sorbet trio of champagne and raspberry, ouzo and mandarin, and lemon thyme ($7).
Chef Ennest has succeeded in bringing refined Greece cuisine to Calgary’s dining scene. Opa! |
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