Observer Online | A Taste of Greece at Reston's Mykonos

Edition of Dece. 28, 2007

A Taste of Greece at Reston's Mykonos

By Joanna Lewis, Restaurant Critic

After several people told me about the good food at Mykonos, a Greek restaurant just off Wiehle Avenue in Reston, I decided to investigate. Four meals at Mykonos have left me in agreement with the fans of the restaurant.

About a year ago Andreas Dimitriou and his wife, Maria, opened their small restaurant in the location that was previously a barbeque place. They have a high-volume carryout business that serves the nearby offices, in addition to 14 tables that seat groups of two and four people.

Andreas Dimitriou cooks from his mother's recipes, which are stellar, and the restaurant's moussaka, pastichio, soutzoukakia and spanakopita are wonderful. A very nice béchamel sauce covers the moussaka and pastichio, and their spanakopita may be the best I ever tasted.

The restaurant adds a small pasta called tragana to the spinach mixture and this absorbs the spinach juices, producing a nice, dry, perfectly seasoned serving of this signature dish. The spanakopita was delicious even when reheated the next day.

Dinner entrees are priced from $11 for the pastichio to $16 for the beef shish kebab and shrimp kebab. The Mykonos combination is also $16 and has large servings of most of the house specialties.

Spanakopita is available as an appetizer, as are dolmades, tzatziki and melitzanosalata, a garlic-infused eggplant dip served with pita. For $14, visitors to the restaurant can try the “mezze” appetizers, a sampling of seven items and pita bread. The restaurant's pita bread and tzatziki are both excellent. Their avgolemono soup, a Greek-style chicken and lemon soup, could have used a stronger lemon taste and the broth was not as thick as I have had before.

Mykonos serves gyros and chicken, pork, lamb or beef souvlaki along with a small Greek salad. The gyro and chicken and pork souvlaki are excellent. At lunch, they range from $7 to $9 and they can be ordered as a platter with a Greek salad and some include French fries. The dinner platters cost from $11 to $13.

The restaurant's top desserts include baklava and a delicious rice pudding, which does not contain raisins and is just sweet enough. They also offer crème caramel, cannoli and cheesecake, all priced at $4.50. In addition, they offer some very good, inexpensive Greek wines.

Children's orders include hamburgers, grilled cheese, chicken wings and spaghetti, among others. High chairs and booster seats are available.

Even though Mykonos is a bare-bones kind of place, the restaurant has a lot going for it with its Greek specialties and beautiful artwork (Andreas Dimitriou's late mother was an artist as well as a cook and she painted the artwork that hangs in the restaurant). Mykonos is open from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and they deliver those days from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. with a $20 minimum order.