Greek Street Revisited

Greek Street Pizza & More
225 W. Ironwood Dr., Coeur d'Alene
(208) 664-0604

Last time I crashed the Greek Street lunch party in September 2010, I ordered a "pizzaloni" - sort of an illegitimate love baby between a calzone and a hunk of deep fried scone bread. I thought it was fully brilliant, and I wrote:

"...when I returned home and opened the Styrofoam to-go box, my taste buds immediately started weeping tears of joy, realizing they were in for a treat like they hadn’t experienced in ages. Indeed, with an oozy meld of Asiago, Romano, Mozzerlla, and real Parmesan inside a lightly crispy golden shell of homemade dough, it caused a pleasant rush of food euphoria. The red sauce was a bouquet of garden-fresh Italian herbs and sweet tomatoes and the pepperoni was positively packed with flavor. Simply incredible."

That's pretty gushy-mushy, even for me, and although I was craving to re-experience the bliss today when I visited Greek Street for the second time ever, but the wall poster of a iconic looking basket full of a gyro and fries prompted my eyeballs to tell my appetite to reconsider.

The lone employee on duty was visibly annoyed with me at first, and I don't really blame him. I asked for the lamb gyro lunch special basket with extra feta, and he came back at me a bit abruptly with the news that Greek Street was out of feta cheese. A Greek restaurant out of feta cheese? That's like a Subway out of bread (this actually happened to me once), or a strip club out of dollar bills. It just ain't right. Especially when there's an Albertson's deli case ripe with cartons of feta cheese around the corner in the same shopping center.

So I was thinking, "uh...I dunno what I want now, maybe a pizzaloni after all. Maybe, but uh...what kind of pizzaloni do I want?" Or do I want a...uh?" There were other customers waiting on their food and I was holding up the show, and my man rightfully snapped at me that he would be back in a bit and would return was I was through with my fits of indecision.

He returned about six minutes later. "OK, I guess I'll take the lamb gyro lunch special basket after all but with a sprinkle of mozzarella instead." He rolled his eyes a bit at me and slapped my order ticket up on the line. In the ten minutes it took for my order to appear his irritation with me must have faded some - he issued me a warm "thanks for coming in", a wave and a smile as I turned and left with my take-out order.

My lunch, despite its to-go Styrofoam and foil wrap, actually looked pretty close to what had appeared on the pop-art-ish wall poster in the restaurant. My fries had turned a bit chilly, but were still very tasty - a sprinkle of Parmesan and herbs always serves to enhance the mood of any potato situation like culinary cymbalta.

The gryo was a delicious but messy beast. I had to stop eating at one point to go get a wet towel to clean up my desk, my creamy hands, and the front of my shirt. The tzatziki sauce was poured on that thing so thick and rich that every time I went to pick the thing up and take a bite, I practically ended up with the tangy white sauce in my hair and up in the crevasses of my...well...never mind.

Anyway, the lamb was cooked to an almost crunchy texture and it was terrific, the tomatoes, lettuce, and onions were mighty fresh, and the pita was warm and chewy-soft, not a hint of chewy staleness. Do they make the babies on site? If so, I want a half-dozen to go some time so I can make peanut butter and banana pitas for breakfast (Is that weird?).

Yes, despite the trace amounts of snarly and slow customer service (forgiven,  it was sort of busy and he was the running the place solo), Greek Street is a clean, convenient and classic place for a variety of Greek lunch treats and power-packed pizza products. /alliteration button off.
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