Before food carts were a viable path for Portland chefs looking to introduce new cuisines or showcase their culinary skill, tiny restaurants served a similar purpose. Souvlaki Queen, a new Greek restaurant with a tight menu of souvlaki (meat skewers), salads, pita, spanakopita and baklava, is taking that older route, opening last year in the micro-sized downtown space once home to Hillbilly Bento.
Limits can inspire creativity. And Souvlaki Queen chef-owner Alexandra Jones, who calls her restaurant “a food cart with four walls,” has kept things interesting within the margins by focusing on the details. The chicken and pork skewers, gently seasoned with herbs, are seared on the kind of table-top grill you might bring camping. Under a dusting of paprika, the lush tzatziki sauce clearly comes from full-fat yogurt (“my family thinks low-fat yogurt is bad for your health,” Jones jokes).
A fresh Greek salad, sometimes chopped to order, shimmers with bright red tomato, green cucumber, slivers of orange pepper and the sun-bleached salt flavor of Greek olives and feta. The spanakopita is flaky, stuffed with spinach and feta and, like the skewers, served in generous portions. Long grain rice and housemade pita play their parts, soaking up any residual souvlaki juices. When available, the house baklava soaked in honey syrup with a subtle spritz of citrus has some intriguing notes of brown sugar, as if a bit of strudel had strolled into the recipe…