An Odyssey Through Greek Cuisine : The food at Cafe Athens is so good, patrons wonder if it’s authentic. Even the dancing waiters are OK

During the time I spent in Greece, the food was always disappointing in the restaurants. I rarely sensed an insistence on the best ingredients, or an attempt to get the best out of the ingredients available. Everything seemed to be served at the same temperature, whether it was salad or shish kebab, coffee or rice pudding. I came across baklava that was like shoe leather in syrup.

One American woman of Greek ancestry, now living in Greece, practically blushes when asked where the good food is. “The restaurant tradition isn’t very well developed,” she says defensively. She mutters about a couple of little places in Athens, and says she’s eaten well in some homes. Tough luck for me, though.

So I was dubious when I heard about the opening of an ambitious Greek restaurant called Cafe Athens (in a rather jinxed Santa Monica location that has recently seen restaurants open and close at the rate of about one a year). And when I heard there were dancing waiters, my hands involuntarily reached up to protect my ears; since the ‘60s, American Greek restaurants have developed the tradition of cranking up the music every couple of minutes when dancing waiters come out to intrude on everybody’s dinner.

If I could have seen the interior of the place, I would have known that all was well. Cafe Athens is owned by the same people who own the Great Greek in Sherman Oaks, and the walls have the same stark, impressive graphic style. Only here, they are covered not with old Greek newspapers and nostalgic Greek political slogans (such as “Bulgarians Out!”), but with huge photos of famous Greeks and Greek-Americans and their names, writ very large: “SAVALAS.” “LOUGANIS.” “ONASSIS.”

And like the Great Greek, Cafe Athens serves the kind of food I always hoped to find in Greece. It’s so rich and carefully prepared that you hear people openly doubt that it’s authentic. Indeed, one of the owners freely admits traveling to various countries around the eastern Mediterranean to find the best versions of dishes, which is perfectly legitimate, since many of the dishes are part of a common heritage throughout the region.

The food tends to be impressive, and impressively varied. Big, meaty stuffed grape leaves with a distinct dill flavor under the egg-lemon sauce. Sharp, garlicky cucumbers in yogurt (tzatziki). The richest fish-roe sauce (tarama) I’ve ever had, practically like fish-roe butter. An eggplant dip that at first brings to mind the Lebanese baba ghannuj, but is almost ethereally light; it tastes of yogurt rather than sesame.

Saganaki, the cheese served flaming in cognac, is a bit of a Greek restaurant cliche, but it really is good here, splashed with lemon juice at the end. The octopus in the octopus salad is tender without being mushy, and the raucous, oregano-flavored vinaigrette makes octopus seem a more fun-loving food than it usually is. Taverna-style eggplant is sliced and fried Japanese eggplant served cold with a sweet tomato sauce that could be Italian.

I did find the spiced meatballs a little strange--they have a peculiar doughy envelope around them, and seem to be the one item served at room temperature that should be warm. The hummus and the tabbouli could use a little lemon juice, but of course one thing you’re absolutely sure of finding in a Greek restaurant is quartered lemons.

Like the Great Greek, Cafe Athens offers what it calls a “family-style deluxe dinner” that consists of 15 items. They’re smallish portions, and it’s a little hard to say what’s an appetizer and what’s an entree, but then the menu is altogether casual about that distinction. In many cases it’s just a matter of the size of the portion.

Some items are so rich you’d be crazy to order them as appetizers, unless you want to knock down your appetite in a real hurry. The moussaka is one, approximately three times as meaty as any moussaka I had in Greece. The pastichio (the name is more often spelled pastitsio) is also fantastically rich: a 3 1/2-inch-high rectangle of macaroni mixed with ground meat and a bit of tomato, topped with sauce bechamel (which is as Greek as mayonnaise is American) and grated Parmesan.

The entrees make the usual specialty of lamb and seafood. The lamb is particularly good, especially the wonderfully sweet and tender rack of baby lamb. The oven-roasted lamb (one of the items also included in the family-style dinner) is roasted quite brown but is as tender as if it had been stewed. As for the fried calamari--I’ve been wondering how they get those big, thick rings of squid to remain so tender?

Sometimes you come across sausage at a Greek restaurant. Here there are two: a gamy lamb sausage and a veal sausage loud with black pepper, both roughly grilled and served with green beans in a meaty tomato sauce.

Peasant-style chopped beefsteak sounds and even looks like Salisbury steak under a new name, but it’s actually one of the best things on the menu. The meat, which is enjoyably mixed with chopped onion, really does have a steak flavor, and the effect is underscored with a red wine sauce.

The menu unexpectedly has a section titled “Greek and Sicilian Pastas,” whose specialty is something called burned-butter pasta. This is angel hair sauteed with browned butter and garlic and sprinkled with kasseri cheese, and you get a sample of it in the family-style dinner. You can also order it as an entree, but in my experience, enjoyable as it is, a whole plate of it gets to be a bit much.

The dessert list is a little short, and not really as exciting as the rest of the menu. The rice pudding is authentically sweet and the galaktobouriko (a sort of custard-filled baklava) authentically heavy. The baklava has a walnut filling so astonishingly thick I wonder whether it’s ever served this way in Greece; it’s like an American deep-dish nut pie in filo. The honey nut parfait is really the most fun: a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and four drifts of whipped cream sprinkled with walnut and pistachio and powerfully flavored Greek honey from Mt. Hymettus.

And now the time has come to face the question of the dancing waiters.

Yes, there are dancing waiters, Wednesday through Sunday. No, the musicians (a live Greek trio) do not crank up the volume when they come out; no, the dancers do not try to bully people into dancing with them. Some of the customers do join in, though--I’ve seen one do the dance in which you overturn a glass of water on a plate and step balancing it on your forehead.

They don’t just do a couple of bozo steps, but fairly complicated line dances. There’s the solo dancing made famous in “Never on Sunday” and some routines where one man squats on the floor while another does steps that could be dangerous for the squatter if he weren’t perfectly coordinated.

Cafe Athens is great Greek food (that is, Great Greek-style food) plus great Greek dancing. Not long ago I wouldn’t have thought any of that possible.

Cafe Athens

1000 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, (213) 395-1000.

Open for Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m Monday-Friday; dinner 3:30-12:30 daily. Full bar. Parking lot. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $39-$73.

Recommended dishes: saganaki, $6.85; eggplant melitzanosalata, $5.25; Greek caviar tarama, $5.65; peasant-style chopped beefsteak, $12.95; grilled sausages, $18.85; rack of baby lamb, market price (around $22.95); family-style deluxe dinner, $21.95 (minimum two people); honey nut parfait, $4.65.