Wednesday, July 21. Acropolis. Mary Ann says she has a television appearance booked for me next week in Dallas. A month or so ago, I told the radio station I would vacation this week and next for this very sort of thing. Between engagements, I would drive around Texas, perhaps even visit my beloved Big Bend country. In the original plan, I would leave tomorrow--perhaps with Mary Ann, perhaps not. But, since no plans have been made, it looks like the weekend before anything will happen.
Dinner at Acropolis Cuisine, for my first time in years. I forget it's there. The place is almost invisible, in a small, old strip mall on Veterans Boulevard, swallowed up by many bigger, more glittering restaurants. And there's not enough parking on front (there's more around back, but you don't know that if you've never been).
The food at Acropolis has always been terrific, and the prices are so low that I don't see how anyone with even a slightly avid appetite could resist it. Enough other people have made this discovery to keep the place happily busy. The menu is predominantly Greek, but Greek food is a tough sell. So they flesh it out with Italian dishes and pizza. I never tried that part of the menu until tonight. The motherly waitress said I would like the heaping platter (is there any other size?) of angel hair pasta with red sauce and eggplant Parmigiana. And I did. I couldn't conjure up a memory of one I enjoyed more.
The eggplant parm was the entree in one of several four-course dinners Acropolis offers nightly. You start with either the soup of the day or the avgolemono soup. Egg and lemon soup, as classic a Greek dish as I can imagine, here served with a very generous admixture of chicken. Again, I tried to remember one as good as this. Maybe the Royal Oak equaled it, but that was back in the 1970s, and I can't trust my memory to make a fair comparison. I think I might have to get this soup every time I come in from now on.
I finished up with an excellent bread pudding, with pecans both in the pudding and the sauce, and a nice flavor of cinnamon or nutmeg. Came with the dinner!
Acropolis Cuisine. Metairie: 3841 Veterans Blvd. 504-888-9046. Greek. Pizza. Pasta.
