A Very Busy Spot

I recently took a trip up to Canada both to see family that lives up there (my sibling has been a resident of Canuckistan for the better part of twenty years) and to go with them to a hot sauce festival in their area (which will get its own write up soon). My trips, however, are centered almost entirely around good (see also: hot sauce festival), so this trip was really an excuse for me to sit around for a couple of days and eat at all the good places that my sibling has found over the years. And so we did.

The first stop of the trip (before even getting to the hot sauce festival the next day) was Dimi’s Greek House. I’d had a craving for a good gyro for a couple of days leading up to the trip, so it was the perfect excuse to see what London, Ontario, had on offer for Greek food and how it all measured up. Dimi’s is one of a few Greek restaurants in the city, but it’s the one that, as my sibling put it, “has the best food if you don’t care about the price.” Their estimate on that wasn’t far off (good and bad) and so we placed an order and dug in.

Note, we had to do take out as Dimi’s is a bopping hot spot, apparently, on a Friday night and the restaurant was packed. We would have been looking at a two hour wait just to get in, so take out seemed like the best compromise. Thus we didn’t get the food with its best plating, or the whole restaurant experience, so I can only judge based on what we got in our to-go boxes and how it all tasted.

And, for the most part, it was pretty good. That’s a good and bad thing because “pretty good” is usually a sign of a solid restaurant, but “pretty good” for a high price really isn’t that good at all. Even factoring in the fact that we were paying Canadian prices (and thus, as an American, I was effectively getting everything at a seventy-five percent discount), I still don’t think what we paid was worth the kind of food we got… but we’ll get to that in a moment.

I started my meal with the spanakoptia, a traditional Greek appetizer. I love this stuff and will get it at any Greek restaurant I can. It’s layers of sauteed spinach and feta cheese wrapped in phyllo dough, then fried up crisp and served with a herb sauce. It was delicious here, just as I expected. Honestly, it’s hard to screw up this dish because it really only needs three things: phyllo, spinach, and cheese. Dimi’s nailed that, and then served it with that tasty herb sauce that brought it all together. Honestly, I probably could have killed two plates of this and walked away a happy man. As it was, though, I had more of the meal to get through.

I followed this with the Lamb & Beef Pita Gyros, a platter for this handheld wrap. Served with cucumber, tomato, onions, feta, and an herby sauce, this was pretty solid. As far as gyros go, it was a tasty one, although I wouldn’t say it was particularly noteworthy, for good or ill. Nothing tasted bad, and it was all pretty well cooked and put together… but it also didn’t stand out to me either. It didn’t have that spark that made me need to shove it in my face. It wasn’t so savory, so herby, that I needed to eat it. I had about half, with the greek salad side I ordered, and then set the rest aside for lunch later (which was okay as pitas don’t tend to reheat well in the microwave). It was just… fine. Not bad, but not stellar.

On that note, the Greek salad was a miss in my books. For a small upcharge ($4.50 CAD, so actually not that small an upcharge) you could swap out the fries that came with the meal with a salad or “Greek Fries” (which are like Greek poutine, fries topped with gyro ingredients). I opted for the salad, which was tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and a thick slice of feta, served with a bit of oil and herbs dressing. It was underwhelming. Part of that was because the dressing wasn’t very tasty. It was too oily for me. But the other issue was that it wasn’t even really a salad. Everything was rough cut, with large chunks in the box together. It felt like the sides you’d get with some hot wings and not a properly put together salad. I’m not sure what Dimi’s was going for here but it did not feel like a salad to me.

Others in the group got more items to taste. The Chicken Souvlaki (functionally meat on a stick) was well seasoned but I thought the chicken was a bit overcooked. The Lemon Cream Pasta (rigatoni with veggies and lemon dill cream sauce) looked pretty but didn’t have enough sauce for my tastes. And the Chicken Gyro was similar to the Lamb & Beef Gyro in that it was decent, but not awe inspiring.

We finished out the meal with a slice of Baklava Cheesecake. We honestly probably would have skipped this except there’s a running joke about my sibling getting a meal and ordering two cheesecakes with it (made sense in context of the meal, was just funny after) so when we see cheesecake we get it now. It was good for what it was. I’m not a huge fan of baklava, finding the mix of phyllo, honey, and nuts to be kind of gross (but then I’m not a huge fan of nuts anyway). Those that tried it all liked the mix of flavors, while I won’t deny that the cheesecake itself was well made, soft and tender with just the right texture. It’s a solidly made cheesecake with a weird bit of topping, so I wouldn’t get it again (but others in the group might).

Overall it was a fair, but not incredible, experience. We can chalk some of it up to the fact that the meal was to-go, but in general I expected more from the restaurant. That’s especially considering that the whole meal came in (with tax and tip at over $230 bucks. Yes, that was for a small group, but compared to other meals we paid for that weekend, this was at the high end of the totals. All that for a meal that I probably could have gotten better elsewhere. It wasn’t terrible but, for the money, I would have rather gone somewhere else instead.

I think the atmosphere is part of the reason why people go to Dimi’s as, from what I saw of the place as I picked up food, it is a very handsome restaurant. Maybe they have a wonderful bartender and a great wine selection. Perhaps it all comes together better when you eat in. Whatever the case, this meal wasn’t good enough for me to consider going back. Take out is touch and go at times, and this take out meal was just middling enough that it soured me on the restaurant in general. Fair? Maybe not, but I also don’t live in London, ON, so the likelihood of me giving them a chance again, when there are other places there to hit on my infrequent visits, is rather low. They shot their shot, and this time it failed for me.