Tag Archives: Crete

Tasty Tuesday: Dinner at Souvlaki GR

6 Sep

My friend Laura, from college, came to Greece with me one summer, so when she and her husband visited me this summer in New York City, I knew just the spot to take them: Souvlaki GR.  My sister and I had passed it one day while wandering the Lower East Side, and I did a double take because it was as if I had seen a mirage of a taverna on a Greek island.  With a stone floor, white-washed walls with blue shutters, and beach umbrellas inside the restaurant, it perfectly captured the laid-back vibe of Greece.  It was perfect for reminiscing about our all-too-long-ago vacation in Crete.

As it turns out, Souvlaki GR started out as a food truck before opening its Lower East Side restaurant.  Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that no matter how trendy food trucks are, I just can’t get onboard with them.  My parents didn’t raise me to eat out of trucks.  That said, I can see why Souvlaki GR would be a popular food truck.  The food and its packaging are the perfect portable meal.  Their restaurant is so cute, though, that I wish they’d stepped it up with the food and offered larger portions more suitable for a sit-down restaurant.

What do you think: should a food truck-turned restaurant keep to its winning menu or should the restaurant offer something more than the truck?

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The Buzz on Flash-mob Bees, Bowery Bees, and Greek Bee Myths

1 Jun

Oh my goodness, did you guys hear about the bees that took over Little Italy yesterday??  Apparently, thousands of bees decided to meet up at lunchtime in front of the Italian American Museum on the corner of Mulberry and Grand.  They swarmed a mailbox, completely covering its side.  This leads me to ponder two questions:

1.  Are these flash-mob bees the insect contingent of Improv Everywhere?

2.  What sort of sweet notes would a bee mail to his honey?

It also reminds me that I still haven’t told you about Bowery Bees.  On Sunday, May 8, my photojournalist friend Annie Ling and I went to the Festival of New Ideas for the New City, an incredibly thought-provoking art initiative that brought artists and thinkers together to explore ideas that could shape a new New York.  One of the collaborations was between Anarchy Apiaries, a Hudson Valley apiary run by beekeeper-artist Sam Comfort, and the Bowery Poetry Club, a performing-arts venue founded and run by poet Bob Holman.

After a brief talk on bees, we climbed up to the rooftop of the Bowery Poetry Club for the unveiling of the apiary.  Sam had brought the bees down from Germantown that morning and set up hives so that Bob could start the rooftop apiary Bowery Bees.  Standing amidst the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s East Village, we witnessed the queen bee do her dance.

Even though I was afraid of getting stung, I have to admit it was rather spectacular.  My parents have a large garden in Greece, where they gather olives to make their own olive oil, and I tried to convince my dad he should set up some beehives.  Bee myths play heavily into Greek mythology and Greek literature.  Bee emblems appear in ancient ruins on the Greek islands of Crete and Rhodes.

Bowery Bees honey can be bought at the Bowery Poetry Club, located at 308 Bowery, between Houston and Bleecker.

How do you like the antenna?

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