This Kanella Grill Lunch Has Me Chilling Like An Old Greek Gentleman With Nothing Left To Prove

It would be one of those awful things lifestyle writers say to even suggest that there is a war on lunch going on right now. So I will not say that. What I will say, though, is that in this moment, while your gentri-pubs and BYOBs alike are in heated competition for your dinner dollar and food that comes from trucks is attempting to hoover up the rest, lunch is chugging along, much as it has been for decades.

This is a good thing, is what I’m saying. If lunch began to, say, come with a have you dined with us before? (as if you’ve never had lunch) or a we recommend three dishes per person or if suddenly for any reason lunch needed to be explained in that needy way every new restaurant feels that dinner does, why, lunch would just another object of dread in a world gone mad. But it is not. Lunch remains… great.

Proof: This Kanella Grill lunch, the one pictured before you, has me chilling like an old Greek gentleman with nothing left to prove. Over the years, many have rightly rhapsodized about the original Kanella’s take on Cypriot cuisine, and I mean to take nothing away from that. But Kanella Grill — Chef Konstantinos Pitsillides’ reboot of the original Kanella space at 10th and Spruce — is some top level, inexpensive comfort food that makes for such a champion lunch that you might almost feel like you’re getting away with something. Before you, you will see the Kofte platter (a recurring special), decked out with pita, tzatziki, and veg; there’s also a sidecar of tabbouleh. Before I ate it, I was agitated, persnickety, confused about the rest of my day’s schedule; after, I felt like a grand old fellow who might spend the rest of the day reading and not listening to other people.

I would eat lunch at this place every day if I could. 

Kanella Grill, 1001 Spruce St.