Ethnic Eats – Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver

Every country has some form of dumpling and meat on a stick shows up all over the world too, from Indonesian satay to American county fair corndogs. Why? Because somewhere along the line we discovered that skewering a piece of meat was a handy way of cooking and eating our protein. And also because it tastes good.

One of my favorite meat on a stick meals is Greek souvlaki. Usually pork or chicken (but sometimes lamb or beef too), it’s cooked without a lot of spices, but served with pita and garlicky tzatziki. I love it, but my sister and I ate so much of it in Greece a couple of years ago that she still can’t order it. My friend and I ended up at Piato Estiatorio, a relatively new restaurant on 4th. To be fair, I haven’t been yet because I haven’t heard great things about it and my hesitation was compounded by the several quizzical looks I got from people on the way there when I told them where I was going. I guess they haven’t made much in-roads with the locals.

But it’s a beautiful room, blue and white as all greek restaurants must be, with stylish accent pieces set against painted brick. And the menu had several items that jumped out at me, including the seafood souvlaki with skewered Albacore.

They brought (pita) bread and butter to start and I ordered the lemony chicken avgolemono soup, which I thought would be perfect for the cold I was starting to get. It was delicately flavoured and light and delicious. Next I had the standard souvlaki, which at Piato is lamb and pork belly, accompanied by a Mythos beer – something else my sister and I had a lot of in Greece.

I wasn’t sure how pork belly was going to hold up on a skewer and while it was definitely tasty, it seemed like a less fatty part of the pig than pork belly. The lamb leg was also good and the platter came with grilled onions, peppers, asparagus, fresh tomatoes, pita bread and lots of tzatziki.

I think Piato’s trying to re-style themselves as a more stylish Greek taverna, and if that’s the case, I should have had something more stylish than meat on a stick. The soup was good and the souvlaki was fine, but there’s plenty of greek places around town that do it better.

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Piato Estiatorio
1835 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver