Description
Kentro looks nothing like the typical Greek restaurant. There are no Hellenic-styled fonts or idyllic pictures of seaside Santorini. You'd swear you had stumbled into a newfangled yuppie gastropub or some sort of uppity wine bar. But then there's the small vestibule stocked with Greek goods and candy bars in this sit-yourself establishment, where the silverware is stored in tableside caddies and the tap water is offered in bottles. Orders are placed and paid for at the counter. There's an immense blackboard crammed with multisyllabic words you've no hope of pronouncing properly, such as melitzanosalata, a dip closely resembling baba ganoush that takes all that's good and sweet about an eggplant and concentrates it in a warm, garlic-intoned mush dribbled with extra virgin olive oil and a smattering of parsley. This is a restaurant that rewards those who go beyond the gyros, with a taramosalata that is one of the more advanced flavors offered. Made of carp roe, it's a fishy, overwhelming salt-lick of a paste you'll initially apply sparingly on bread, but then subsequently slather on everything as soon as you've warmed up to its charms. Full entrées include a char-flecked pork souvlaki with wild rice, a bigger plate featuring superlative lamb chops, a belly-stretching mousaka, a few vegetarian options, a steak, a roasted half-chicken, and two fish dishes. A simple pan-fried filet of sea bass is called psari tiganito and paired with an excellent roasted-corn side dish the Greeks dubbed kalamboki.
