THE GOSSIPING GOURMET: Take a trip to Greece at the Aegean Café

Have a hankering for hummus, a taste for tabouli or a thirst for tzatziki? Climb the steps to the Aegean Café and find a piece of the Peloponnesus on Pacific Coast Highway.

This bistro, looking out to sea if you’re sitting in the right place, has the classic whitewashed walls and Mediterranean blue accents of almost every taverna in Greece. There is a wooden floor for dancing, a small bandstand for the musicians and a fireplace separating the main dining room from the bar.

The glassed-in outdoor terrace is an especially nice place to sit on a summer night to watch the sunset.

Appetizers are often the most interesting dishes on any menu. They offer smaller portions and the opportunity to taste many different things. Also, they frequently are more complex than the grilled or sautéed proteins that constitute the entrée list.

You can always cook a lamb chop at home but who’s going to make spanakopita? We think this is particularly true in Greek restaurants, where it is hard to get past the long list of interesting and delicious starters.

To solve this dilemma, we chose an entrée that was mostly appetizers. The Greek vegetable plate has seven different tastes. The hummus was very fresh and light with an underpinning of really good olive oil.

The tabouli was exceptional. This mixture of a wheat grain (very similar to couscous) is blended with parsley, tomatoes, scallions, chives, olive oil and lemon juice. The balance of flavors was perfect. Tabouli can be too grainy and sometimes the flavor of parsley overwhelms everything. This, in the words of Goldilocks, was “just right”.

The spanakopita was flaky and buttery with a healthy amount of spinach but a bit short on the feta cheese that gives the filling most of its flavor. The only disappointment was the vegetarian dolmades (flavored in grape leaves). They were simply boring.

The vegetarian moussaka, a layered dish, had a wonderful eggplant, mushroom and squash filling but the classic béchamel topping was heavy and gooey rather than light and fluffy.

Just to mention a few of the other choices that we had to pass on: melitzanosalata, an eggplant dip, taramasalata , a red caviar, garlic and potato puree and saganaki, a hot melted cheese dish flamed with brandy at your table with a shout of “opa”! (All the above are eaten with pita bread.) These appetizers are quite large and really portioned for sharing.

We decided to refresh our palates with a Greek salad. Unfortunately, it arrived drowning in dressing. You could practically hear the tomatoes crying for help!

We asked the waiter to bring us another one with dressing on the side, which he did graciously and promptly. Using a mere tablespoon was sufficient because the vegetables and lettuce were cold and crispy while the olives, feta cheese and finely sliced pepperoncini were of excellent quality, adding piquancy; altogether making a delicious salad.

There are two classic Greek soups to choose from, avgolemono (chicken broth with egg, lemon juice and orzo pasta) and lentil.

The entrées are divided between specialties, seafood and broiled dishes. From the broiler come marinated steak, lamb or chicken skewers (souvlaki), lamb chops and New York steak.

Among the specialties is the classic moussaka with ground sirloin. Also there are two preparations of lamb shank as well as a lamb stew and a leg of lamb.

Both chicken dishes come with spinach. One is stuffed with spinach, dill and feta and topped with lemon sauce. The other is chicken in filo dough with spinach, artichoke hearts and feta, topped with mushroom wine sauce.

For pasta, try the makaronia, penne with tomato, garlic, herbs, vegetables and grated cheese.

Our second entrée was an “off-the-boat special”, the Poseidon combo, another plate that allows you to taste a variety of offerings.

In this case, jumbo shrimp, sea bass, halibut and salmon, all baked with lemon, butter and white wine. Often, in Greece, you sit in a little restaurant beside the sea and watch the fishermen delivering their catch directly to the kitchen where the simplest of preparations is all that’s required to turn out a sublime dish. Here, however, something more is needed.

The fish were all somewhat bland, however the accompanying vegetables were unusually good. We noticed this as well on the Greek vegetable plate, where there was a mélange of perfectly cooked and nicely seasoned broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and squash. The fish came with those overcooked green beans that you often get in Europe that look awful but are simply irresistible.

Rather than the simpler grilled or broiled items, try some of the more flavorful long simmered Greek specialties like the lamb kleftiko with tomatoes, Portobello mushrooms and kefalotiri cheese or just stick with the great appetizers.

In any Greek restaurant, there must be baklava for dessert. This and all their other desserts are house-made including a variation of baklava called galactaboreko, a flan and a tiramisu.

We couldn’t pass up eating something with a name like galactaboreko which is a semolina pudding between layers of filo dough with simple syrup poured over the top. The crispy pastry becomes quite soggy and chewy from the watery syrup while the pudding was just okay. The most interesting thing about this dessert is the name.

Another pleasure of traveling in Greece is the sound of music and love of dancing that seem to be everywhere. Here at the Aegean, Wednesday through Sunday, there is live music and on the weekends, the waiters put their arms around each other and dance energetically with vigorous shuffling and leaping steps in the traditional fashion.

Then, the belly dancer comes out and after a demonstration of her amazing agility and skill entices diners to come up and make fools of themselves — all in good fun.