2 New Places Serve Up Greek and Peruvian Cookery

Serendipity is defined as the gift of finding valuable things not sought after. Last week I experienced it twice. I stumbled into two small, exotic restaurants, one Greek, the other Peruvian. Both are new and tucked away in mini-malls, and both are hard to spot if you are just casually driving by. Most important, both serve surprisingly authentic dishes at reasonable prices.

Greek Cuisine in Tustin is operated by Tony and Maria Costadini, a young couple who recently took over the location from a Lebanese family. In a few short months, it has come to rival any Greek restaurant in Orange County.

The dining room is spotless and high-spirited. Tablecloths, umbrellas and even the plant hangers are, you guessed it, various shades of blues and whites, Greek national colors. Greek music plays continually over mounted speakers, but anyone daunted by the rhythms of Hadjidakis or the twang of a bouzouki can opt for the outdoor patio. Food is served by a team of Greek-speaking waitresses, one of whom is an Irish girl from Santa Ana. Relax. She speaks English too.

Even if you’re a bit jittery about caviar, start with the kitchen’s wonderful taramo salata , a creamed carp roe made with onions, lemon juice and olive oil. Eat it with warmed pita bread, Kalamata olives and feta, the pungent white Greek goat cheese (from Bulgaria). It is the best taramo I’ve tasted.

Dinners are moderate feasts; many specialties come with little extras you don’t even find in the larger Greek restaurants. The charcoal-flavored, fall-off-the-bone-tender chicken oregano, for example, comes with skordalia , a garlic paste thickened with mashed potato. Padakia combo , two grilled lamb chops that have been slow-marinated in lemon juice, comes with dolmades , tiny stuffed grape leaves with a meat and rice filling, and exocheko , a shredded-lamb pie in filo pastry. Even the restaurant’s steak sandwich rises to near greatness, embellished by a tempting eggplant caviar, like a Russian baklazhania icra with olive oil.

All dishes come with sauced rice, oven-roasted potato and a melange of zucchini, onions and Greek spices. Additionally, there is a choice of Greek salad (with feta, olives and cucumbers) or avgolemono , egg-lemon soup. The soup is especially comforting, made from natural chicken stock. Eggs are beaten in to order.

Save room for the house baklava--a dense, buttery confection of filo dough layered with finely chopped walnuts, generous sprinklings of cinnamon and far too much honey. Dessert doesn’t get much richer than this.

While Peru is a long way off, the Flamingo restaurant in Fountain Valley brings it a little closer to Orange County.

The restaurant is spacious, almost overly so. Owner Roberto Leyva, from the Peruvian capital of Lima, is unofficial maitre’d, holding forth on his native dishes with obvious pride. Wife Maria, also from Lima, spends her time cooking in the all-open kitchen.

The cooking at Flamingo can be very good, but I wish the restaurant would be less obvious about dishes ( papa rellena , or stuffed potato, to name one) prepared in advance and then microwaved. When the timer on a microwave goes off with a buzz, it gives one pause. Still, the dish, laden with raisins, olives and ground beef, was quite tasty.

Potatoes and yucca root are staples of the Peruvian diet, and Flamingo serves them with everything, even the ceviche.

The ceviche mixto --marinated raw snapper, squid, shrimp and octopus served on a grand platter--is a sensible starting point. Ceviche, after all, originated in Peru, not Mexico. Traditionally, it’s served with the salsa criolla (vinegared onions and parsley) on the side. Here, you dip the fish in a paste made from fresh cilantro and garlic that is at once refreshing and powerful. As an appetizer, it easily serves three.

Main dishes are on the heavy side. Seco Norteno is a piquant version of lamb stew in a thick onion sauce. Papas a la Huancaina , perhaps Peru’s most famous dish, is whole boiled potatoes smothered in a three-cheese sauce--sort of like a Welsh rarebit. Fish, like snapper or sole, are typically grilled and then sauced con camarones (with little shrimps in a corn starch-based sauce) or al ajillo (in a rich garlic sauce).

Don’t miss the interesting desserts. Picarones are hot pumpkin-flour fritters--they look like Indian pakoras --in a blackstrap molasses syrup flavored with prune. I could eat them all day. Gorgueros look like Italian cannoli , tubes of fried dough with a creamy filling. But this time the filling is cream de leche , a condensed milk confection heavy with brown sugar.

Both restaurants are inexpensive. At Greek Cuisine, appetizers start at $1.95 and go no higher than $6.95 for an assortment that serves four. Dinners are from $7.95 to $10.95. At Flamingo, appetizers are from $3.50 to $6.95, main dishes from $5.95 to $12.95.

GREEK CUISINE

13011 Newport Ave., Tustin

(714) 731-1179

Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner Sunday through Thursday 5 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m.

American Express, MasterCard, Visa accepted.

FLAMINGO

17185 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley

Open Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m.

Cash only.