Greek Marina experience a bit rough around edges

By Helen Wu
Advertiser Restaurant Critic

The Greek Marina restaurant at Koko Marina Center in Hawai'i Kai features dishes such as spanakopita, which consists of spinach and feta cheese baked in filo dough, as well as fried calamari and tarama salata, a creamy, pale orange, carp-roe dip. Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

The mixed vegetable plate offers a profusion of Mediterranean flavors with tastes of dolmades, falafel, hummus and baba ghanouj.

Greek Marina Koko Marina Center, Hawai'i Kai 7192 Kalaniana'ole Highway, No. E-126 396-8441 Lunch: 11 a.m.-3 p.m, Monday-Saturday Dinner: 5-9 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 5-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday

My first encounter at dinner was wonderful. My dinner companion and I excitedly looked over the menu and launched into its selection of assorted hot and cold appetizers, mezedes or mezes in Greek.

Spanakopita ($3.95) — spinach and feta cheese baked in filo dough — is usually served by itself at most places. Here, it was topped off with tzatziki (cool yogurt sauce with cucumbers) and accompanied by a small salad for a refreshing change. Fried calamari ($7.95) also had great flavor. I normally don't care for aioli, a garlic mayonnaise, but at Greek Marina, it has just the right amount of zing and was the perfect dip for the squid.

Tarama salata ($7.95), a creamy, pale orange, carp-roe dip, was smoothed out on a small fish-shaped dish and garnished with an olive eye for an original presentation. A side plate of hot pita bread slices added to the warm feeling developing in my stomach; I felt like I was slowly falling in love with the place. I thought, "Wow, they care enough to add the little extras, like when someone goes to the trouble of opening a car door for you."

Then I heard the sound of screeching brakes at the arrival of what was supposed to be the soup of the day ($3.25). I had ordered avgolemono (Greek chicken soup with lemon, egg and rice), which was said to be available, but received a lukewarm seafood soup instead. When I asked our waitress about the change, she informed me the kitchen had run out of avgolemono. The unannounced substitution annoyed me.

Entrees served with hefty portions of Greek salad returned me to Cloud Nine. Moussaka ($13.95) — layered eggplant and ground-beef casserole — was enticing with its faint sweetness. The mixed vegetable plate ($14.95) was a vegetarian gold mine. Filling dolmades (rice-stuffed grape leaves), savory falafel (deep-fried, ground chickpea patties), rich hummus (sesame-seed paste and ground chick-pea dip) and smoky baba ghanouj (pureed eggplant dip) were a profusion of Mediterranean flavors.

Desserts were anticlimactic. Baklava ($3.95) was dry, and basboosa ($3.95) — a cake of semolina flour, drenched in syrup — was extremely moist but plain. Greek coffee, listed on the menu, would have been ideal with both, but only ordinary coffee was available.

I could live with the irregularities experienced at that first dinner, but I was disappointed by each subsequent visit, causing the initial sparkle to fade.

The higher quality at dinner deteriorated at lunch with only one bustling cook. We didn't wait long for food, yet inconsistencies abounded. The kitchen was still serving seafood soup more than a few days past my dinner visit. It also was out of pickled eggplant ($5.95), a regular on the menu. One day, the lettuce was brown and pita bread was cold; the next day, the salad was overdressed.

Mixed souvlaki, consisting of chicken, lamb and shrimp ($13.95), was a heartbreaker. I was sad to find the marinated, skewered and grilled meat chunks overcooked, tough, lacking salt and charred. Clumpy, mushy rice on the plate also was disillusioning. My fish-of-the-day sandwich arrived with slightly burned mahi mahi and fries ($7.95) instead of the salad I had ordered.

Waiters were cordial but sometimes struggled to explain certain menu items. But more than once, they were kind enough to warn us about unpopular items, offering to remove them from the bill if we disliked them. Their cautions made me wonder why these items were still on the menu.

I cannot recommend the tabbouleh salad ($4.95). Typically made with cracked wheat as its main ingredient, the Greek Marina's version was the closest I've ever come to eating a raw bunch of curly parsley and not much else. Also, avoid the carbonated yogurt drink ($2.50) similar to fizzy, liquefied goat cheese, only watered down.

My next dinner visit fared better than lunch but still couldn't match my first encounter. Also, prices are a few dollars higher than lunch and can be on the expensive side for what you get. The mixed souvlaki plate's rice and bland meat were not so overcooked. A braised lamb shank we tried, although tender, also was poorly seasoned. Finally, on a fourth visit, I did get a chicken and lemon soup, but it was too sour, with overly piercing flavors; it didn't contain the egg that is an integral ingredient in avgolemono.

If I were to return, it would be for select dishes only — mezedes and the vegetable plate, both worth the price — and only because Greek food is so scarce here.

Reach Helen Wu at hwu@honoluluadvertiser.com.