When I met Robby, we were both agents at TeleCharge, taking phone orders for tickets to Broadway shows and, in between calls, shooting the shit. Robby’s now a producer, and I’m a produced playwright, and our taste in food has evolved – but we still don’t enjoy spending fifty or seventy bucks trying a new restaurant only to discover that the food didn't live up to the hype, or that the service was horrible. Thus was the prix fixe club born.
My buddy Kelvin and I met in B-school, and have also hung around various restaurants looking for a cheap meal. The chopstick salad at Dojo is still one of my favorites, although you can no longer get it for five bucks as you could in the 80’s. I introduced Kelvin to Robby a year or two ago, and Kelvin is now a fixture in the “club” as well, joining us for various meals at various places around Manhattan.
This is going to seem silly to you, but I always felt weird about doing a prix fixe dinner. It seemed rather touristy to me, and as a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker I have a love/hate thing going on with tourists (love the money they spend, hate the way they clog the streets gawking when I’m trying to get somewhere). It’s my insecurity about having grown up as a working class kid in New Jersey – as if asking to see the prix fixe menu was exactly like telling the waiter “Do you have happy meals for broke adults?” But then, see, we got used to this great thing called Restaurant week (now extended through September 6th! Whoo-hoo!), and even fancy-schmantzy restaurants create a fixed price menu, appetizer, entrée and dessert, as a promotional. That’s right, it’s to let new diners know what the food tastes like, so they might, perhaps, return under other circumstances and know they’re not going to be disappointed.
When the club got together about a month ago, Restaurant week was in full swing, and we decided to check out some Greek food at Kellari Tavern. Greek food is great for me, because it’s heavy in fish, yogurt, and olive oil, and not so heavy in things I can’t stomach like cream, butter, saturated fats and cholesterol. Robby’s boyfriend Julio had been to Kellari before and really loved it, so when we saw it was participating in Restaurant Week, we three were in.
When you get to Kellari you see a gorgeous restaurant a tiny bit off the regular theatre district drag. High ceilings, lots of wood and warm lighting, and a roomy bar where they accommodate drinkers with bowls of fabulous olives and a huge slab of great, hard cheese and crostini-sized croutons to go with them. I had a glass of Pinot Grigio and ate more cheese than I should have before Robby showed.
Kel came in a bit later (he’s always got to park the car so he misses the beginnings of conversations a lot), and we sat down to review the choices for Restaurant week, only to discover that right on the back of the laminated 35-buck RW prix fixe, there was another business-as-usual pre-theatre prix fixe. And it was $32.95. ( – only available between 4 PM and 7 PM). Find the menu here: http://www.kellari.us/prepost_theater.php. While you couldn’t mix and match between the two, the pre-theatre menu appealed to all three of us and, of course, if you actually are attending the theatre they will get you out of there quick enough.
For the appetizer, I couldn’t resist the grilled squid. I love squid, but can’t usually eat it because I avoid deep fried food and breaded stuff and most restaurants give it the onion-ring treatment. Gach. But a Greek Taverna rises and falls on the quality of it’s squid, grilled not fried, so I hoped this would be splendid and I was right. Cooked perfectly – not gummy, not chewy, with just a little olive oil and lemon. A thing of beauty. Kel and Robby loved it too. Kel entertained himself with a greek salad, as did Rob.
The waiter recommended that we try the Lavraki for entrée. A small Mediterranean bass, it did require a little navigation around the bones as smaller fish generally do, but of course it was melt in your mouth delicious. My favorite thing, pre-diet, was lamb, but I had to leave the lamb chops alone this time and live vicariously through other diners. Kel joined me in choosing the fish, and Rob went for the Seafood Yiouvetsi – oven roasted orzo, with shrimp, mussels and clams. Pasta is also not on my personal menu anymore, but Rob loved it and ate every bite of course.
For dessert, each of us chose something different and we all got to taste. Robby went for the baklavas – baklava can be a little sad if the pastry isn’t right, but this was perfectly done. If the honey hadn’t added a teeny bit of extra weight, the pastry might well have just floated off and ended up on the ceiling. Mine was the Karidopita, a honey walnut cake and – something I can never ever resist – fig ice cream. I die. Kel went for the greek yogurt, honey and walnuts – a traditional Greek dessert that has the added attraction of being easy to recreate at home (in a home made peasant version of course) with zero-fat greek yogurt and whatever nuts and honey you have handy. I’m becoming a real expert on various types of honey, and using thyme or clover makes a difference – but if you’re home and trying to avoid running out to Food Town to buy Keebler cookies and then eating the whole bag, yogurt-nuts-n-honey is better for you and, to be honest, actually tastes better too.
I’m very much looking forward to my next trip to Kellari. I pondered coming up with a “rating system” for this blog – you know “I give it four sporks” or something – but that’s too silly, so all I’ll say is – the portions are worth the price, the food is brilliant, and the price is right so… Eat there. Trust me.
Next week’s chapter will be “West Bank Café – celebrating its 30th Anniversary with a 30 buck PF!”
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