Feats of Feta

Until I worked for several years at the legendary Athena Restaurant at 3535 Broadway, dishes like moussaka and souvlaki were just Greek to me.

Before it closed in 1994, the Athena was owned by charismatic, Greek-born Yannis Vantzos, who now runs the much smaller Sun Ray Café at 17th Street and Summit. It had a loyal following of stylish movers and shakers who packed the art-filled dining room on weekends, hungry for juicy lamb chops, grilled fish and other traditional Greek food. When I wasn’t tending to my customers or sneaking a cigarette at the bar, I did manage to learn a lot about Greek cuisine (and volatile Greeks). Not only the correct way to pronounce tongue-twisting words such as tzatziki and galatoboureko but also how to patiently explain to new patrons that there was much more to this fascinating cuisine than gyro sandwiches — which we didn’t serve anyway.

I haven’t eaten much Greek food in town since the Athena closed. I know that the raucous Tasso’s in south Kansas City has its fans, but the vibe there is just too frenetic for me, and the food isn’t spectacular enough to tolerate all that ouzo-fueled festivity.

If I’m going to go Greek, I need a more mellow setting. My ideal meal would be in some tiny taverna on the island of Santorini, overlooking the Aegean Sea. But the next best thing — at least around here— is the two-month-old Olympic Village Restaurant & Bar, overlooking the asphalt parking lot at 103rd Street and Mastin. It may be the only Greek restaurant in town that occasionally employs a bubbly piano player (complete with his own sign: “Music by Paul”) to bang out show tunes on the oak upright in the middle of the dining room. After ripping through a medley of hits from A Chorus Line, Paul ventured back toward this restaurant’s motif with an impassioned performance of the theme song from Never on Sunday, a 1960 movie set in the Greek harbor city of Piraeus.

The restaurant’s owners are Greek-born Anastasio Rodopoulos, his daughter, Rebecca, and a friend, Craig Holzer. They’ve chosen an odd location for their first Kansas restaurant: The Wycliffe Shopping Center isn’t exactly an exciting destination — in fact, I didn’t see many shopping possibilities. Instead, the center is dominated by an Overland Park outpost of National American University. Students from that school like to come in for lunch, Rodopoulos says, because his generous gyro sandwiches sell for just $5.25. Dinner business is a little slower — though the entrée prices are still very reasonable.

“People told me this was a terrible location,” Rodopoulos told me. “They told me this area was dead. But I say that if you serve good food in a nice, clean dining room with a relaxed atmosphere, people will come.”

As if to underscore his argument, the pianist launched into “My Way” and a table of 12 older diners burst into applause. Olympic Village has been done Rodopoulos’ way, from the menu to the hand-laid floor — made with broken pieces of shiny colored granite from 36 countries. There’s a full-sized pergola bedecked with plastic vines and polyurethane grapes, along with many photographs of Olympic athletes and at least one celebrity: a young, dark-haired Anastasio Rodopoulos posing with The Love Boat‘s Gavin MacLeod.

Despite that little token of Hollywood glamour near the bathrooms, Olympic Village is a simple, unpretentious restaurant. Tables are draped with blue linens topped with clear vinyl. But the décor isn’t the star at Olympic Village, nor is the keyboard artistry of “Music by Paul.” The reason that anyone would want to cope with the construction in front of Wycliffe Shopping Center is to eat some comforting, tasty Greek food served, as Rodopoulos hoped, in a pleasant dining room.

You have to admire the owners for trying so hard. I ate in the restaurant three times, and on two of those visits, Holzer and Rodopoulos were working as waiters, bartenders and busboys. If the food hadn’t come out in a relatively snappy manner, I might have assumed they were cooking, too. For all I know, they were.

On those two visits, the kitchen was out of moussaka — the eggplant-and-ground-beef casserole that’s become a staple of Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants in the United States. Holzer told me that it’s so popular, he sells out of it.

Well, I eventually tasted his version, and its alleged popularity is a mystery to me. It’s not the worst moussaka in Kansas City — several other restaurants compete for that honor — but it lacked the juicy, fluffy heft of this classic dish done right.

It was one of very few disappointments at Olympic Village. Another was the night I raced over with a friend to have dinner before the place closed at 10 p.m. We got there at 9:30, and the doors were locked. “We didn’t have any business after 9,” Holzer later explained, “so we decided to close up.”

In my book, that’s a no-no, and I griped about it for a couple of days, until a friend reminded me that when I was a waiter, I dreaded late tables. So I decided to cut Olympic Village some slack.

Besides, my other meals there were really fine. Better than fine — especially the plump, homemade beef-and-rice dolmades; the smooth, garlicky hummus; the fried goat cheese and sautéed saganaki shrimp starter. A smidgeon of self-control prevented me from ordering the offbeat Combination Platter, which matches sampler-sized portions of appetizer and entrée items, and eating it all myself.

On the night I dined with Franklin, he went for the pastichio after I described it to him as the Greek version of lasagna. (It isn’t, but close enough.) Rodopoulos’ is a baked-macaroni number layered with ground beef, cheese and béchamel sauce; the portion is a bit stingy, but that’s offset by a mountain of lemony roasted potatoes.

That was the same night I sniffed at the moussaka but ate it anyway. Much better was dessert, a luscious, quivering cube of galatoboureko — soothing custard baked in phyllo pastry. I tasted the baklava, too, and though it was sweet and nutty, it wasn’t nearly crispy and flaky enough.

A few nights later, I dined al fresco on one of the sidewalk tables with my friend Bob. After finishing an uncomplicated salad of lettuce, salty feta, onion and olives in a tart vinaigrette, I savored every bite of a dish that Rodopoulos calls Village Lamb, a lovely roulade of slow-cooked, fork-tender lamb sided by orzo pasta sprinkled with cheese.

Bob was impressed by the juicy chicken riganato, fragrant with oregano and tender under a light, crackly crust. He wound up taking most of his meal home because he got caught up in an animated conversation with Rodopoulos, who is quite a raconteur. Rodopoulos has a million stories, mostly from his youth in Greece and his student years in California, and he happily shares them with his customers.

I was too busy to join the conversation. Even after I finished the lamb, there was still pita bread to dip into creamy tzatziki sauce and pieces of feta and a pile of potatoes. In this Olympic Village, I was on my way to a medal in eating.