Kyma

J and I have long had our eye on Kyma. We love Greek food, and we have always heard that Kyma is very good. When M&N, fellow foodies, mentioned Kyma and their shared fixed-course dinner, we jumped at the chance to go with them. We went with the fixed price, family-style four appetizer and whole grilled fish dinner.

For starters were the spreads -- roasted pepper (which I was only okay with, but J liked a lot), skordalia (which is a puree of potato base (usually) which I found to be incredibly mustardy), and an eggplant spread which was by far my favorite since I'm such an eggplant nut. Toasted, still warm flatbreads came with the spreads and they were awesome.

The first dish out was zucchini chips. They were topped with mizithra cheese and manouri cream. They were surprisingly delicious. Perhaps it was the crunchy mixed with the salty creamy. I'm not sure that I would order them again, but I enjoyed them.

Next was the calamari and sea urchin special. They fried the calamari in thin strips so that it was straight like pasta and served it with little bits of sea urchin. I thought the calamari was odd and a little chewy but the sea urchin was surprisingly good. I've always been afraid of sea urchin so I was surprised that we both seemed to like it.

Grape leaves are one of my favorite starters. They were good, served with their tzatziki, but were not really that special. It feels like blasphemy to say so, but my taste for grape leaves is so crude that I'm satisfied by the ones at the Grecian Gyro.

The wood-grilled octopus lives in J's taste memory. It's served with red onions, olive oil, and red wine vinegar. Personally, I thought it was a little chewy, but everyone else was raving about it so I'm obviously flawed.

We also got some ribs that I think were huge but I think they also weren't as good as we had hoped. M makes some amazingly good smoked ribs so it was a big deal that he felt these were worthy of being ordered. Perhaps they were just off this night. I can't remember what they tasted like so it obviously didn't make an impression.

The whole grilled fish was fagri which our waiter told us was basically a pink porgy. They bring the fish to the table whole and then fillet it for you and serve with a squeeze of lemon and some pan-seared greens. I think it also comes with potatoes. It was pretty damn good. I know that grilling whole fish is so cheap and easy because we were shocked when we tried it at home, but there is something very nice about someone grilling and filleting it for you.

I believe they brought out a dessert with a candle but at this point, I think I was five glasses in. M broke out the Tokaji with dessert which included some doughnut hole fried dessert topped with whispery strands of honey. Very tasty.

We were very pleased with the dinner and would definitely go back.