The Great Greek

It’s beautiful up here at the northern rim of the Valley, just at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains. Only a few decades back, this was horse and coyote country. Today it’s tasteful suburbia.

Porter Ranch, in particular, has spawned a proliferation of ethnic restaurants in the area. The freshest of them is Cafe Graikos, a cramped but charming place decorated in blond wood and Greek scenes by a local watercolor artist.

Everything at Graikos is made from scratch daily. Graikos manages to make Greek food that is low in fat and cholesterol--and entirely without MSG, that dirty little secret of many Greek restaurants. The only complaint anybody might have is that the food is sometimes underspiced.

Generally, it’s so good you won’t mind the absence of the cornball hospitality traditional in Greek restaurants. Our waitress, a tall, willowy blond with a pronounced Midwestern twang, lit a match to our saganaki, a brandy-drenched slab of Kasseri cheese. Then she said, “Opa!” but softly, adding, “I’m working on it.”

The cheese turned out to be pungent and delicious. Another good appetizer, when it’s available, is bourekia, a filo pastry pie stuffed with lamb and pine nuts. If you’ve never seen this version of bourekia on a Greek menu before, it’s because the chefs are Syrian-born, and an appealing Middle Eastern sensibility crops up often in their dishes.

Especially in vegetarian dishes, such as the delicious cheese bourekia, stuffed with feta, onions and parsley. Add spinach to the filling and you’ve got the Valley’s best spanakopita, or spinach cheese pie. And the hummus, though the menu speaks of it as a favorite Greek dip, is Middle Eastern all the way, with a beautiful balance among the garbanzos, sesame paste, garlic and lemon juice. Baba ghannouj is a similar dip based on pureed eggplant and topped with a sprinkle of tart ground sumac berries.

Skordalia is a totally Greek spread based on mashed potatoes with lots of garlic and hints of cilantro, lemon juice and olive oil. One dip not often seen is spanaki lemonato, a cold spinach dip. It may be too tart for many tastes.

You can confidently order the Greek salad--or better yet, the hearty lentil horiatiki, which sets the usual Greek village salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, onions and Kalamata olives--on a lively base of spiced lentils. Crunchy falafel patties come in salads or stuffed into sandwiches. Graikos’ tabbouleh is a forest-green and Christmas-red version, with just a bit of bulgur holding together the tomatoes, minced parsley and mint.

Just about any of the main courses is worth ordering. There’s an eggplant and ground beef casserole (moussaka), a juicy, adroitly blackened lamb kebab, an especially tender chicken kebab and heavily sauced angel hair pasta crowned with large prawns (pastitsio garides).

Stuffed grape leaves are available in vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions--yalanzi and dolmathes, respectively. One oddment that grew on me is the house gyro: thin, dry shingles of roast meat that taste much better inside a warm pita smeared with tzatziki (yogurt mint sauce) than on a plate. The Middle East surfaces impressively in imam bayildi, tomatoey baked Japanese eggplants with a walnut and herb stuffing.

Save room for dessert. Taste this cafe’s fresh, soft baklava, honey-drenched and perfumed with rose water, and you’ll never eat day-old again. Rizogalo is a creamy, tightly packed rice pudding, perfect for sharing. For the sweet tooth, I recommend galaktoboureko, another honey-drenched pastry, with a custardy, semolina-based filling.

BE THERE

Cafe Graikos, 19346 Rinaldi St., Northridge. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Dinner for two, $24-$39. Suggested dishes: bourekia, $3.95; lentil horiatiki, $5.95; moussaka, $8.25; lamb souvlaki, $10.95; baklava, $1.25. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. (818) 831-1187.