Sunday, November 4, 2007

Daphne's Greek Cafe - a great fast-foodish chain

I can't remember the first time I tried Daphne's. I'm pretty sure it was at someone else's suggestion. But it's a place I love now. The menu still kind of confuses me because for some reason, it's not totally clear to me what's included with various things. I have on one occasion ordered something, only to have it come with way too much stuff.

I usually order a kebab plate - chicken and beef. You get one skewer of each, and you get rice pilaf, greek salad and pita bread. Sometimes, I'll order the vegetarian combo plate, which comes with a mixture of various items (like spanakopita, grape leaves and hummus), plus salad and rice. I love Daphne's salad dressing, enough that I bought a bottle to keep at home. I recently tried the half chicken plate, and the chicken was very tender and tasty. On the kebabs, I tend to like the beef a bit more only because they're a bit moister and easier to get off the stick. The cooked chicken tends to be a little drier and fairly difficult to get off the stick whole. In the past few months, I've also come to really like their lemon chicken avgolemono soup. I love the lemony flavor, and even in summer, the warm soup tastes good because they usually have the dining area nicely cooled with air conditioning. We've also come to like their "just the dips" appetizer.

At Daphne's, you order at the counter, and if you've ordered a drink, they'll give you your cup, which you can fill/refill from the drink station. You are also given a number, which you put on your table, and then your order is brought out to you. Each table is set with a paper napkin, real knife (the butter kind, not the steak kind) and a real fork. Your food is brought out on a real plate. When you're done, you just leave your items on the table, and they clean it up for you. It's fast food, but with more flavor, a little more of the niceties and better food. I've always encountered very friendly and helpful people working at Daphne's, and they're generally very quick at clearing/cleaning tables. They are opening more locations all the time, and while there is a location not terribly far from work, parking is an issue there, so I don't go nearly as often as I'd like to.

They also have a rewards program that keeps count of your expenditures, and you get discounts and other offers emailed to you.

Here's the official website.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm. One of these just opened about 2 blocks from my office. I hadn't gotten around to trying it yet, but I suppose I should soon.

Cindy said...

If you're interested in the kebab but don't want the chicken, I think they'll charge you a little more, but you can get two steak kebabs, I think.

You'll come back and tell me how you like it, right?

Anonymous said...

I had lunch there this afternoon and liked it a lot. They were offering a lunch special that came with 1 kebab (steak or chicken), rice, salad, pita bread, and a drink. I went ahead and got that with the steak kebab.

The steak was very tender and had a lot of flavor. At first, I was a little concerned that the portion looked small, but one kebab plus all the side stuff was actually plenty for lunch. I'd probably want a larger combo at dinner time. The sides were all really good as well and I did agree with your praise for the salad dressing. I particularly liked the pita bread, though, which I thought had a bit more flavor than at other similar places.

I definitely liked that the food was cooked fresh and brought out to the table and it was also nice eating at a fast-foodish place that still used real dishes. Cooking the food fresh means that it takes a bit longer than most fast food places, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing since I'm not always in that big a rush to get back to the office. I'll just have to remember not to head over there if I'm on a tight schedule for some reason.

The one other down side is that this particular restaurant is a bit small and doesn't have very many tables (I think it was 5 tables inside and 3 or 4 more outside). I typically head to lunch around 1pm, so I likely will miss the main lunch rush in most cases. I'll probably want to avoid it if I need to take a noon hour lunch or if it is raining out.

Anyway, I liked the place a lot and will likely add it to my lunch options. Only potential down side to it is that the same new shopping center where Daphne's opened also has a Coldstone Creamery, which I find really hard to resist...

Cindy said...

Glad you liked it!

Mmmmm, Coldstone...