Reviews of The Olive Tree
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Review
City Newspaper, Rochester, NY 2002
Gut Instincts
From HUD to high Greek at The Olive Tree
by Adam Wilcox
In many places, if you say “Greek
restaurant,” folks
will assume you mean a diner. The diner will serve low-quality
gyros made with low-quality meat products on a lame pita, as well
as something they’ll call “souvlaki” that amounts
to grilled meat over an iceberg salad. I can go for that sometimes,
particularly around 2 a.m. when choices are limited. But this kind
of restaurant and food is what the owner Joanne Gekas calls, “the
stereotype; this is what we were fighting against when we opened.”
That
isn’t all that she and her husband Peter were fighting
against in 1977 when they bought an abandoned building near the
loop on Monroe Avenue. “You wouldn’t believe the smell
and the junk,” Joanne told me. “We’d go over
on weekends to clean, and the kids would say, ‘Oh, no, not
that place.’” Peter removed an entire wooden addition
from the back – the place is a garden and patio now – and
ultimately, 18 dumpster loads of garbage came out. The banks weren’t
interested in financing new businesses in that part of town, so
Peter and Joanne got a HUD loan. On November 21, 1979, they finally
opened, having no idea how to run a restaurant.
What the Gekases
did have was a vision: to use the finest, freshest ingredients
to prepare a high-end, lighter version of Greek food.
People often had to wait for meals in those early days. “But
our customers were so nice about it,” Joanne said. If the
food is good and the prices are fair, people will be nice, and
I’m sure that’s why they were.” Twenty-one years
later the food is uniformly excellent, and the experience of dining
at The Olive Tree is delightful.
Get some appetizers when you go.
For $4.50, you can get a sample of the tiropita and spanakopita.
The former is filo dough hand-rolled
around Feta and egg, while the latter adds spinach to the filling
(spelling note: both “filo” and “phyllo” are
accepted, but Joanne has strong feelings about the spelling, so
I’m using “filo”). The Olive Tree uses excellent
Feta, which when properly served – as it is here – has
much of the saltiness of its brine washed away. The result is creamy
and delicately-flavored, instead of the pickle-like saltiness we
are used to.
Don’t stop with the typical; move on to the
saganaki ($4.50). Typically made with kasseri, the version we had
was a sharper cheese
called kefalo graviera. It was dipped in egg, rolled in bread crumbs,
and flambéed with brandy, with the fire extinguished by
a squeeze of fresh lemon. Bourgourdi was also delicious, with Feta,
red peppers, and thin slices of tomato passed under the broiler
($5.50). Michael Warren Thomas and I danced around the last bites
of these two before negotiating a settlement.
The combination
platter provides a variety of appetizers for a reasonable $6.50.
It includes tiropita, spanakopita, dolmades (stuffed
grape leaves), Feta, pita and a dip called “Tarama,” as
Peter calls it, is one of the specialties of the house, a blend
of caviar, olive oil, and lemon juice. People order bathtubs-full
for parties, and The Olive Tree has shipped it as far as California.
It’s not for the weak, but divinely decadent.
Yes, you can
get moussaka, but don’t expect the heavy, oily,
spud-centered thing you’re used to. Carefully prepared, thinly
sliced eggplant is layered with ground lamb, then topped with a
béchamel that almost becomes a soufflé when baked.
It’s $14.50 at dinner, $8 at lunch, and comes with a side
salad (with fresh, mixed greens, excellent tomato, onion, Kalamata
olives, and a simple herbed vinaigrette). There is also a version
of moussaka with layered vegetables instead of meat ($13.50/$8).
Not just a substitute for vegetarians, it has its own, sweeter
flavor, and more textural complexity.
Kapama was another baked,
filo wrapped entrée ($17.50) in
which Kasseri cheese provided a perfect meeting place for the depth
of lamb and the sharpness of the artichoke hearts. Scallops Kataifi
was as beautiful as it was delicious: a nest of shredded filo,
filled with crabmeat stuffing and sea scallops and then broiled.
The scallops were sweet and tender, and $16.50 seemed reasonable
considering the ingredients and the preparation. I also had Psari
Politiko ($16.50) sole baked with crab meat and Feta. Again the
delicacy of the Feta was a great compliment to the seafood.
There
were lots of other things worth talking about. Peter makes a garlic
dip called skordalia that was like garlic-infused vichyssoise.
Longtime chef Thomas Moriarty – everyone knows him as Marty – makes
a milder version than Peter; for the mas macho, ask for it Peter’s
way. The two soups I tried were also great: fassolada, with its
northern beans and the richly-textured vegetable broth, and avgolemono,
chicken orzo with egg-lemon sauce. Cups are $2.50, bowls $3. Our
side vegetable was a delicate mixture of green beans, red peppers,
and tomato (one litigious food mole tells me the briami is also
spectacular). And if you’re a fan of baklava, the Olive Tree’s
is super (Michael won’t order it anywhere else).
There were
more divided opinions during my lunch visit than during my two
dinner trips. Not everyone loved the “simplicity” of
the salad dressing I described earlier. One person said her preferred
more Feta flavor in the spanakopita (this is probably the result
of not being used to de-brined Feta). A very unusual turkey burger,
on the other had was a big hit. One member of our party was there
a bit longer than she wanted to be. The Olive Tree isn’t
the best choice for a fast business lunch.
The Olive Tree has been
with us for nearly 22 years now, doing its own thing, and doing
it very well. Peter and Joanne took a
dump in a bad neighborhood, and turned it into a landmark-caliber
building, a great restaurant, and the cornerstone of a revitalized
neighborhood. When you go, be sure to look at the pictures of what
it was like in 1977. Then look around the building and tour the
patio; it really is amazing. I used to go to The Olive Tree a decade
ago, but somehow got out of the habit. I won’t let it happen
again, and neither should you.
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