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Below is an article
published in Toledo's Largest newspaper...
Article published Thursday, October 11, 2007
Restaurant review: Grandma's Country Cookin'
****
Grandma's Country Cookin' more than lives up
to its name!
Author: Bill of Fare
In the mid-1960s, there was a Greek
restaurant in downtown Toledo that discarded
menus in favor of letting customers stroll
into the kitchen and decide for themselves
what looked and tasted good. The chef would
lift the lids of the big pots bubbling on
the stove so patrons could decide among the
lamb shanks, soups, and stews. It was like
eating at home.
The restaurant was Athans' Greek Village on
Erie Street, which the founder, John Athans,
eventually passed on to his manager, George
Krinas, another Greek immigrant who later
moved the restaurant to a couple of other
downtown locations before moving on to
greener pastures.
Some 40 years later, Chef Krinas and his
wife, Georgia, remain in the restaurant
business, this time on Glendale Avenue. He
still dishes up home-cooked food, even if
customers no longer have the run of the
kitchen.
For a time, the place was called H.D.
Charly's (as in Hot Dog Charly's), but as
the eatery grew into a more family-oriented
enterprise, the Krinases came up with a new
name: Grandma's Country Cookin'.
Despite the corny name, the restaurant
excels at good, reasonably priced comfort
food, and loads of it. Besides two pages of
breakfast specials, most of which can be
ordered all day long, lunch and dinner (with
only a $1 difference between the two) bring
vast possibilities. One would have to set
aside several weeks' worth of visits in
order to try everything on the menu.
Among the dizzying array of choices are
soups, pasta, pizzas, steaks, chops, ribs,
country ham, seafood, prime rib, lamb
shanks, baked, broiled, and fried chicken,
chili mac, Mexican, Polish, Irish, and
Hungarian dishes, burgers, hot dogs, and
sandwiches of all kinds. This is just the
kind of food that Grandma indeed used to
make.
True to George Krinas' roots, Greek dishes
get their just due with the likes of
pastitsio (Greek lasagna), gyros,
Greek-style baked spaghetti, baklava, a
"Greek Sailor" platter of spinach pie,
salad, rice, and pita bread, and a "Greek
Hillbilly" breakfast combining olive oil,
onions, tomatoes, green peppers, and home
fries crowned with melted cheese and two
eggs.
The physical layout oddly resembles the
inside of a cruise ship, what with its
angled pillars, ocean-blue walls, and what
might be regarded as cabins of various-sized
nooks and crannies where prints of Norman
Rockwell works overlook the booths and
tables. There's also a counter with stools,
and the attentive servers are more likely
than not to address you as "Sweetie,"
"Honey," or "Hon."
With such an intimidating menu before us, we
picked a handful of dishes that cried out
for attention. At the top of the lunch list,
all priced around $6, were supremely tasty
baked chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy,
and green beans, and a heap of American
goulash covered with cheese. Also scoring
high were a sensational bowl of beef tips
and noodles, the meat Crockpot-tender amid
an avalanche of noodles and vegetables, plus
a thick slab of meat loaf and mashed
potatoes drowning in divine dark gravy.
Later came a decent cup of chicken noodle
soup but a somewhat rubbery cup of New
England clam chowder (both $1.99 a cup,
$2.89 a bowl); a large chili mac ($5.79)
undone by too much cheese, and a variety of
hot dogs ($1.49-$1.99), from Chicago-style
to Polish sausage and kraut. I opted for the
coney dogs; piled high with chili sauce,
they rank among the best in town. |
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