Hellas Restaurant: Tarpon Springs Greek Food, No Tacky Souvenirs Included

Hellas Restaurant 785 Dodecanese Blvd Tarpon Springs, FL 34689 (727) 934-8400

Hellas is one of the few jillion tourist-oriented Greek restaurants in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Why all the Greek restaurants in this little Florida hamlet, you ask? Well,n not surprisingly, Tarpon Springs is full of Greeks, who came to the little village to sponge-fish and never really left. I've been going there roughly since birth - I have vivid memories of hoovering down giant plates of fried calamari and smelts when I was five or so, to the great pleasure of nearby snowbird grannies. The giant fake great white in the shopping area, the little aquarium with the sting-ray touch tank, the sponge museum with the gory DIVER DYING FROM THE BENDS, it's all coded in my DNA, right down to the tacky-ass souvenir shops and the constantly playing, insanity-inducing sound of Greek pop music. I refuse to hear anything against Tarpon Springs. And you know you actually secretly want a freeze-dried gator head wearing sunglasses. Just admit it, for God's sake.

Hellas has a large bakery with a profusion of Greek style baked goods - think every kind of Baklava known to man - and strong, gritty Turkish coffee that could probably kill you from sheer potency. The adjoining restaurant is pretty good, and has a sort of entirely authentic character that can't really be replicated. You got your waitresses with cigarette smoker voices, you got the dining room full of people in tank tops and pink hats with flamingos on them, you got the guys shouting OPAAAA when they flame up a plate of Saganaki. I love that shit.



This is it: Tampa style Greek salad. You got your Greek salad, you got your potato salad with it, buried beneath a mantle of leafy greens.. Shut up and go with it. The combination somehow manages to be delightful, as the potato salad melds with the herbaceous Greek dressing to take on an oily, incredibly bad for you flavor. The salads at Hellas are insanely huge - this was the salad for one. The salad for five probably generates its own garlicky gravitational field. As local-style Greek salads go, it's pretty good, though ask them to go easy on the dressing.



I chose the grouper special, with Greek style tomato sauce, rice, and potatoes. I adore grouper, especially because it's as rare as unicorns outside Florida, and this was pretty good. The flavorful tomato sauce has plenty of oregano and lemon, and is a worthy accompaniment to seafood. Only gripe? Could have been hotter. Not hot enough food is a big no-no. The piece of fish was caveman sized, which is nice to see. Potatoes and rice pilaf were good enough as side-line carbs go. The bread here is crusty and light, if you're into pre-eating bread.

Also: that fish plate? That fish plate. That fish plate is amazing. I didn't even notice that pinnacle of awesome until I loaded the photo onto my computer. I need 200 of them.




My dad chose pan fried smelts and calamari. Smelts are kind of an acquired taste. They're nothing more then deep fried whole entire little oily fish, complete with bones. (They do lop the heads off). The flavor is unctuous and rather pleasing in a marine way, although I find that I'm perfectly satisfied after eating about three of them.



The calamari was pretty good, if non-descript. Again, not quite hot enough.

We declined a slice of baklava cheesecake larger then our collective heads, and stepped out again onto the street. Incredibly, it was a cold day - 60 degrees, cold enough to cause a native Floridian to run screaming towards a heater, and I am a native Floridian. We bought some lovely goats-milk soap then hustled to the car. I had satisfied my grouper consumption requirement for a trip to Florida. I wish I had bought a freeze-dried baby alligator reclining in a lounge chair, but there will be a next time.

florida food: a brief primer

I am that rare creature: a native Floridian. I was born in Tampa 19 years ago and have moved many times since, but something of my native states humidity, weird politics, and love of alligator meat has stayed with me. I'm always happy to go back, to visit my grandparents, to sit out in the sun that keeps everything warm and toasty even in the deadest and dankest bits of winter. But there's another appeal to the Tampa area: food.

Floridian food isn't a cuisine that's regarded highly (or regarded at all) here in California, and that's a shame. Food in Tampa is a wonderful mix of Cuban flavors, Greek cuisine, Creole and Cajun influences, and good ol' Southern home cooking. Add in some tropical tastes and a good amount of fresh, delicious local seafood, and you've got an enclave that can serve up some damn fine treats.

So what defines Tampa food? What do I gravitate towards first, moth-like, when my feet hit the pavement in Tampa and the humidity begins to curl my hair?


(Image from Food Reference.com.)

Cuban sandwiches were my first love, that's for sure. A Cuban sandwich is oft-debated, but I think of a roll of Cuban garlic bread, filled with swiss cheese, mojo-marinated roast pork, ham, and salami in the Tampa variant, combined with pickle (THERE MUST BE PICKLE), mustard, and a very healthy slobber of mayonaisse. Once the sandwich is composed, it is pressed under a large flat thing over heat - like a panini without grill marks - and quickly devoured, all that melty, cheesy goodness fully sustaining belief in a heavenly deity,or something like that. Cuban sandwiches are special and run deep in the soul of every Floridian. I have a fierce memory of being in preschool in a palm-tree studded backyard, eating a salami-festooned Cubano for a school project of one sort of another. And it was delicious. I have been demanding them ever since when I return to Tampa, seeking them out across the city. One of the best versions I've had was served out of a gas station deli (with a side of neon gummy worms.) These kind of things happen in Florida.

We make them at home whenever the urge to roast a big slab of pig comes upon my dad, but it's never quite the same. The trick is that delicious, crusty garlicky Cuban bread, and no one has bothered to bring it to Sacramento yet. Someday I will find a supplier, and I will be able to be fully content with Sacramento. Maybe.


(Image from the Frenchy's Cafe website, purveyors of fine grouper sandwiches.)

Grouper is my second Tampa food fixation. A grouper is a large, corpulent, and somewhat depressive looking fish that is common in Florida, with firm white meat. It is unspeakably delicious, especially when deep-fried, slathered in tarter sauce and put into a bun. Grouper appears inevitably on almost every Florida menu (including Thai and Italian restaurants) and is served in almost any way you might want to serve firm fleshed white fish, though the deep fried version is almost always most delicious. The Greeks do it up fine too, even when broiled, which while less likely to kill you is not quite the same. I am bound by family convention to say the very best fried grouper is found at my grandparents house where you are unfortunately not invited unless I know you, but grouper of equal deliciousness may be found at Frenchies in Clearwater Beach, originators of the grouper sandwich. But most restaurants in the Tampa area know their way around a good grouper...order with confidence.



Greek food has a strong presence in Tampa, due to an influx of Greek immigrants who came to the nearby town of Tarpon Springs to sponge dive. Tarpon Spring is another integral part of my early childhood, walking down the street and squeezing every big ugly dried sponge displayed out front, gawking at the sharks in the aquarium and the blood-stained model of a victim of the dreaded undersea bends at the world-famous Sponge Museum. My grandfather still speaks with great and ineffable pride about my love for calimari and delicate, pungent fried smelts. When I was two or three, we would go out to our favorite Greek restaurant on the water and order a big plate of calamari and smelts, which I would (apparantly) proceed to messily devour to the great delight of the Greek waitresses who staffed the place.

My love of smelts, squid, and Greek food has never left me, and I anticipate my return to Tarpon Springs every year eagerly indeed. We always eat atPaul's Shrimp House (which I will do a review of in a little bit), but there are rows and rows of Greek restaurants present on Tarpon Spring's main tourist drag, almost all of them good. Amble up and down the street, pick up a dried and gory alligator head or perhaps a flamingo pen, and then sit down wherever strikes your fancy.

Recommended dishes? Seafood is king here, so eat all the squid and fried oysters you possibly can. Greek style squid, sauteed with olives, peppers, onions and feta is incredibly delicious, as is almost anything fried. Boiled shrimp in herbs and spices are another wonderful local treat. If you see Greek salad offered with a scoop of potato salad, a variation found far as I know only in Tampa, please, please go for it - something about Greek salad served with a scoop of savory and smooth potato salad is pure tastiness, oil related calories be damned to hellfire. Round off your meal by walking up the street to one of the various and delicious Greek bakeries, where super-flaky honey drenched baklava, chocolate parfaits, and slices of creamy and cool key lime pie await you. Get some gritty and intense Greek coffee and watch the tourists waddle by. Bam, you're in Florida.


Key lime pie image from PRWeb.com.

Which leads to my final must-eat: key lime pie. This tangy, smooth dessert might have migrated inexorably across the country - it's too good not to - but it is done best in its native home, in Florida. I order it almost everywhere I go, but I know what makes a really good key lime pie. Color is important: none of this neon green food coloring junk, but a delicate, yellow color indicates you're looking at the real thing. A tangy and sharp flavor is also key - no inispid sweetness, a tiny bit of puckertude. Finally, the graham cracker crust must be crumbly (but not too crumbly) providing a perfect offset to the smooth and cool filling. Combine these elements with a spot of whipped cream and you have my absolute ideal dessert - refreshing, not too sweet, with just a little bit of crunch. This may be minor blasphemy, but Publix grocery stores do a pretty darn tasty interpretation of this Florida delight, and they'll even sell you half a pie so you can convince yourself you're exercising restraint. See, wasn't that easy?

There are some odds and ends of Florida eating, of course. Odds are good you'll encounter alligator, which really and truly swear to God does taste like chicken, albeit with a not-unpleasant fishy tang. Order the fried gator' nuggets once or twice and convince yourself you have had an authentic experience - gator ranching is now such a common trade out here that you are in no way damaging species survival. (Fun Florida tip: for God's sake, don't swim in any canals unless you're okay with being eaten.) Another standby is deviled crab, a tasty and spicy croquette like item, filled with crab meat mixed with spicy sauce, onion, and whatever spices the maker finds pertinent. These are very good appetizers and since they are usually football sized (or near to it) will rarely leave you hungry. We had a tasty and humongous version of this at Carmines in Ybor City, but many other area establishments will hook you up good.

Finally, it may sound pedestrian, but keep an eye out for black beans and rice. This distinctly Cuban carbohydrate is delicious, flavorful, and will certainly provide you with the energy required for a day of lying out on the porch and not doing a goddamn thing. I love going to Florida. I love eating in Florida.