If, like me, you spent the past year ordering takeout and forking food out of tiny boxes, you may have forgotten the joy of watching strangers eat.
Quarantined with my family, this was not something I longed for, but once vaccinated and back to dining indoors, all these seemingly insignificant moments fascinated me. Turns out I missed groups raising their glasses for an impromptu toast, the gawking that occurs when servers drop off the next course at a neighboring table, and even the frantic turned heads when dropped silverware unexpectedly clangs on the floor.
This all struck me the first time I walked into Andros Taverna during dinner service and marveled at the crowd. Doug Psaltis and Hsing Chen, the husband-and-wife co-owners, are well aware of the elation on their guests’ faces nearly every day.
“For the first service, we were very tentative, because we didn’t know what to expect,” Psaltis said. “But the people were so happy. Nearly every table says, ‘This is our first meal out since the pandemic.’”
Chen agreed. “A lot of people used to go out to celebrate a birthday or something, but now they are doing it to celebrate just being able to dine out again,” she said.
It could also be that people are just particularly happy to dine at Andros Taverna, which is the most exciting new Greek restaurant to open in Chicago in the past few years. Psaltis, a veteran of a number of high-profile Lettuce Entertain You restaurants downtown such as RPM Steak, calls this his passion project, where he was able to draw from his family’s Greek heritage and his many trips to Greece to create a restaurant focused on “traditional recipes through a contemporary lens.”
This means that any regular visitor to Chicago’s classic Greektown restaurants will probably recognize most of the dishes, though they will undoubtedly look stripped to the bone. Take the grilled Mediterranean octopus ($28), which arrives with nothing but a lemon wedge. This could seem needlessly spare for the price, until you cut in and realize that you never knew octopus could be as tender and juicy as pork, without any trace of rubberiness.
Instead of some elaborate cooking method, Psaltis noted that the kitchen doesn’t fuss with the octopus much. It’s all about sourcing. “The octopus is from Spain,” he said. “It’s unparalleled. It’s the best quality I’ve ever had.” This also helps to explain why the whole grilled sea bass ($46), presented plainly, is so pleasingly delicate and buttery from end to end.
You’ll likely notice that prices are higher than at many popular local Greek restaurants. Nowhere is that more evident than Georgie’s gyros, which goes for a jaw-dropping $22, an amount roughly four times more expensive than most versions of the sandwich in Chicago. My problem with it has nothing to do with the price, and everything with how it puts most other versions to shame.
Hold Georgie’s gyros in your hands, and the warm and freshly made pita feels so plush and soft, you may start questioning why you’ve put up with mass-produced pita bread for so long. Instead of spongy slices of meat, you get juicy, crispymorsels of slow-roasted pork paired with a smack of tangy yogurt and a fresh pop of bright-red tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers. Like gyros in Athens, each one also gets a few salty fries tossed in.
“Gyros have been bastardized a thousand times,” Psaltis said. “Ours is a slightly bigger portion, but we do take the best-quality pork, hand-slice it and cook it over charcoal. We make our own pitas. We source the best yogurt we can find. Plus, the fries are fantastic.”
The fries are fantastic, strangely so, even though they don’t necessarily look different. But try one and you’ll immediately notice a slight crispness that gives way to profound creaminess within. Turns out Psaltis uses the bintje potato, a European variety that he thinks works better with the gyros. “I wanted it to taste more like fried potatoes than a crispy french fry,” Psaltis said.
The whole menu unfolds in a similar way, with small revelations lurking in nearly every dish. The raw vegetables served with the mezze collection ($32) look so bright and crisp, you may wonder if they are fake. Fried zucchini chips ($16) could be greasy bar grub, yet are light and crunchy marvels.
While Psaltis seems to provide Andros Taverna with its guiding philosophy of less is more, the restaurant gets an unexpected polished glint from Hsing Chen. She’s an accomplished pastry chef, having worked at places like The French Laundry and The Peninsula Chicago, and she provides the restaurant with phenomenally precise pastry work.
The spanakopita ($18) features layer upon layer of crispy, crackly phyllo dough that shatters audibly before you reach the soft center of spinach and cheese. “The technique is really where she sings,” Psaltis said. “She makes sure to brush each and every layer with brown butter, not regular butter.”
Phyllo shows up again on the dessert menu with the vanilla soufra ($10), a custard pie drizzled with honey. It could be a sodden mess, but instead it tastes bright and flaky. “We only serve things we bake that day,” Chen said. “Nothing is held.” Chen also takes the lead on the front half of the brunch menu, where you’ll find pastries paired with Greek flavors, like an olive and pistachio twist Danish ($8).
You’ll have no trouble finding a refreshing cocktail at Andros Taverna, but the wine list is the real find. Most bottles are Greek (Psaltis estimates about 91%) and moderately priced. While I wasn’t as familiar with many of the varietals, the staff easily steered me toward some stunning glasses, including the Kir-Yianni “Akakies” Xinomavro, a fruity sparkling wine perfect for spring.
Logan Square already has several excellent restaurants, but few that have the polish of a downtown destination. This can open up Andros Taverna to claims of gentrification, especially since the restaurant is in the Logan Apartments development, a massive new building that replaced a discount store called the Mega Mall. In fact, on my first visit to the restaurant, I walked through an anti-gentrification march at the Logan Square monument aimed at Mark Fishman, who owns a large property management company in the neighborhood.
To their credit, Psaltis and Chen didn’t shy away from the discussion, and hope to forge strong ties with the community. “I feel like we’ve been embraced by the neighborhood already,” Psaltis said. “Most of our employees live in the neighborhood, and some even worked in the old Mega Mall. Hopefully, we are adding something great to Logan Square.”
This reminds me of a 2019 review (before I was technically a critic) of another glitzy Logan Square newcomer called The Whale. That restaurant tried to bring some downtown vibes to the neighborhood, and while it nailed the décor, the food was one grossly overpriced mess after another.
The prices may look similar at Andros Taverna, but the results are the opposite. At Andros quality is evident in every dish, in every bottle of wine and every dessert.
Andros Taverna
2542 N. Milwaukee Ave.
773-365-1900
Tribune rating: Two stars
Open: Tuesday to Friday, 4 to 11 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: Entrees $16 to $46
Noise: Conversation friendly
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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June 01, 2021 at 05:00PM
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Review: Can Andros Taverna justify spending $22 for gyros? - Chicago Tribune
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