Tomorrow (Tuesday, August 24th) Greek Taverna, located at 292 Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, is hosting its Second Annual Open House Anniversary Party. Owners, Peter Hajiyerou and Wei Chen, will be serving up a free buffet, from 6-9 pm featuring skordalia, tangy Greek salad, spanakopita, lamb stew with orzo, pastitsio, and moussaka.
The preparation that goes into this party is serious business – the feast costs over an estimated $18,000.00. The chefs will be preparing 1800 meatballs, 15 trays of moussaka, 15 trays of pastitsio,15 trays of lamb giouvetsi, 15 trays of salad, 1800 pieces of spinach pie,and 10 trays of dips. Of course, if the hungry masses finish all the food before 9 p.m. the very generous Greek Taverna owners will provide more.
You must go to the Greek Taverna website to print an admission ticket. Without this ticket, you will not be admitted. There will also be live Greek Music from 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Remember, Greek Taverna, Montclair, does not have a liquor license, so BYOB.
I visited Greek Taverna yesterday afternoon, when preparations for the big feast had already begun. Chefs, Harry and Emilio, let me in on the secret to their enormously flavorful Greek Meatballs. Want to know what it is?
Push play:
Did anyone go last year? Was it ridiculously crowded?
Very crowded. If you go, expect to spend half an hour in line.
It’s worth the wait.
I went last evening and what could have been a really nice time turned into an expensive evening.
As my friend and I were on the buffet line, someone knocked into our table and everything that was on it fell on the floor and broke. This included our water glasses, our wine glasses and more importantly our bottle of wine. The whole bottle was all broken on the floor.
I heard from the couple sitting next to us, that the guy who did this,didn’t much care.
This spoiled a nice celebration dinner.
karenrmj: While I’m sorry that you had an unpleasant incident last night, is it really helpful to post only your bad experience and nothing positive or constructive about the food or the restaurant? They were hardly responsible for what (sadly) happened to your bottle of wine, right?
So, in the spirit of this particular post, how was the food at Greek Taverna last night?
MTV: I understand that they were not responsible, but at that point, my focus was on the broken bottle of wine. We ate the food, but it was hard to enjoy. I’m sure you’d feel the same way, if it happened to you. It just puts a damper on the whole evening.
Because of the enormous crowd, portions dolled out were extremely small, so you only got to “taste” each item.
Notables were the filo spinach turnovers, and the moussaka.