Went with my department for lunch today. Haven't been there in quite a while. I joined late, so I can't comment on the entire meal.
Service was good; plates cleared, waters refilled without wait or asking.
I ordered a couple of apps. after everyone else's lunch orders were in, but they managed to get things out almost all together for us.
Skordalia was the garlicy cloud that it should be. Intense and fragrant but not sharp.
Fried calamari was very nicely done---lightly, evenly battered, tender and golden, generously portioned.
Grilled calamari (appetizer portion) was perfectly balanced between tender and chewy as well as just a hint of char without sootiness. Lovely lemony olive oil dressing, and judicious herbage. Also generously portioned.
Breadwas fresh and chewy and just the right texture to absorb and stand up to various sauces.
Cappucino was OK. Well foamed but served in a smallish, standard restaurant coffee cup and not particularly flavorful coffee-wise.
Items I didn't try but which others enjoyed and which looked and smelled very good to me were chicken in some sort of special "Santorini" sauce (red), and grouper also in a "Santorini" sauce, but white. Also fried eggplant in a tomato sauce.
The big miss was maybe the simplest item, my broiled mushroom appetizer.
The menu said (or at least this is what thought I read), that they were broiled and served on a skewer. They arrived not en brochette, but sitting, face up on a plate. They were well nice looking, largish standard white mushrooms, but as I popped the first one into my mouth I thought I had just eaten a lump of charcoal from the bottom of the grill or a recently incinerated pad of paper. Flipping over the remaining shrooms one by one, I discovered that the bottom of each was completely blackened.
This confused me on a number of fronts: A) most obviously, who would let this out of the kitchen? It's hard not to know when you've completely burned something in a broiler, and it's not hard to quickly re-do a skewer of mushrooms, (4 min. maybe?) but, B) if they were cooked on a skewer, how did bottoms all get blackened? You would expect the skewer to pass through the cented and then turned, so that if you forgot about them, one side would get burned, not the entire bottom face. Also, I didnt' see any evidence of skewer holes in them, so I wonder how they were cooked at all. In a pan?
I decided that when the waiter returned to check I would let him know because they were truly inedible. But he never returned, and the various servers and busers who brought additional drinks and cleared plates never asked. If it was just me, or me and the Ms., I'd have hailed someone and sent it back, but as I was being treated, and was already a bit out of sync with the party, I decided to just let it go rather than find myself eating mushrooms as everyone else finished up dessert.
Not tragic, but rather a disappointment for a well established joint like Santorini.
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