King of the grill

>> Simple and great Greek
food at Rôtisserie Panama

by A.J. Kinik

The Forum, April 19, 1984. Two Greek guys celebrate having just signed a lease on a restaurant space by banging their heads to the punishing sounds of Van Halen’s 1984 tour.

Hours later, their ears ringing, buzzing off Eddie’s guitar heroics, they tear across town, neon flashing across the windshield, windows rolled all the way down, stereo blasting, giving each other a couple of knowing looks as David Lee Roth drops down into that spoken-word purr of his: Yeah, we’re running a little bit hot tonight…Two weeks later, they christen their Greek restaurant on Jean-Talon: Rôtisserie Panama.

Okay, maybe it didn’t actually go down like that. Maybe the real story was a little more prosaic, a little less rock ‘n’ roll, something along the lines of two Greek Montrealers going down to Panama, making good in the restaurant biz, then coming back and opening yet another successful restaurant. And maybe Panama is an unlikely name for a Greek rotisserie. But so what? The only thing that’s important is that if you go to Rôtisserie Panama, you’ll find a no-nonsense, family-style Greek joint where the grill is king and the food is honest and up-front—exactly as it should be.

On a recent visit to Panama, our party started off with a trio of classic Greek appetizers: the grilled octopus ($15), the saganaki ($14) and the “giant beans” ($5). Panama’s grilled octopus is hugely popular—we saw plate after plate pass our table—and it deserves to be. It’s served as a warm salad, tossed in a vinaigrette with onions, bell peppers and herbs, and the octopus is tender and lightly charred. The portion of saganaki was substantial and it arrived without any of the pomp you find elsewhere—the sizzling plate, the tableside pyrotechnics—but it was so simple and unadorned it made you crave a little of the magic that ouzo imparts. The favas appear on Panama’s list of “cold appetizers,” and sure enough, instead of coming hot and served in a tomato sauce, the way they usually are in Montreal, they came as a salad, dressed only with some Greek oregano and a vinaigrette, giving the delicate flavour of the beans the spotlight.

When it came to mains, we thought about ordering one of the souvlaki plates as part of our cross-section, but our waitress had us pegged as first-timers and she recommended against it. “You can get souvlaki anywhere,” she told us. “Try the whole grilled chicken—it’s a specialty of the house.” So we did, and once we’d done that, we decided to stick to the “House Specialties” section, ordering half a pound of the grilled lamb chops too.

We were glad we took her advice. She was right: pretty much every Greek place in town serves souvlaki, but how many of them serve a whole grilled chicken? At $15, Panama’s grilled chicken isn’t the cheapest in town, but because they grill their chicken in pieces, as opposed to, say, butterfly style, the portion ended up being enormous—much bigger than a single chicken. Each and every piece of chicken gets marinated individually too. The result is an excellent bird, juicy and delicious, worthy of consideration within Montreal’s pantheon of great rotisserie chickens.

The lamb chops ($22/lb) were also fantastic. Simply prepared again, but perfectly grilled and succulent. The platters come with your choice of house salad, potatoes or rice, and you have the option of bumping up your salad to a Greek salad or a portion of horta (sautéed mixed greens) for an additional $1.50. Pretty much our only quibble of the entire evening was that our Greek salad came with our appetizers and not with our grilled meats—we felt like we could have used some salad with our grilled meats. We had roasted potatoes with the chicken and lamb, and they were very good, but those ripe tomatoes would have been a blessing.

By the time our table got cleared, we’d eaten and eaten well, but we just couldn’t resist finishing with something sweet, and when we noticed they had loukoumades on the menu, it was a done deal. Our “half portion” ($5) was, well, huge, but those honey-dripped Greek doughnuts were so fresh and hot that somehow we managed to make them disappear.