Greece is the word

By Paul Reidinger

GREEK FOOD IS a lot more than saganaki, or fried cheese, but when you're deep into a just-flamed plate of that remarkable preparation, the blessing of "opa!" still ringing in your ears, you probably don't care all that much. You're enveloped in the textures – the crisp, the richly soft – and the almost grapefruitlike tang of the cheese. You might also be remembering, if you are at all inclined to fret about calories and fat, one of those nightmare fantasias from The Simpsons, in which a 400-pound Homer is laid to rest in a piano case while the widow Marge wails, "I wish they'd never invented fried cheese!"

Of course the Greeks invented practically everything, though much of today's Greek food shows the influence of centuries of Turkish rule. Whereas the principal crop of the ancient Greeks was barley, the menu at Yianni's – a Greek restaurant (with a sibling in Burlingame) that opened several months ago in the old Café J space on outer Church – is littered with Middle Easternish items, from triangles of warm, soft pita bread on which to spread the cucumber-yogurt puree tzatziki ($4.95) to a cheesecake in a baklava crust ($4.50) – baklava being the Turkish word for a pastry made with honey and nuts. Even the gyro, the pinnacle of Greek cuisine for college students, is built, like Middle Eastern shawarma, on a foundation of pita bread. And not a grain of barley to be found.

Despite the long enmity between Greeks and Turks, the Turkish and Middle Eastern elements in Greek cooking aren't exactly exotic, since Greece is virtually in the Middle East, as a glance at any map will reveal. It feels that way, too – the warm dry air, the rocky hillsides tumbling to a blue sea, the prevalence of grape vines and olive trees, the sandy-colored buildings designed to remain cool in the midday heat.

And Yianni's captures ... none of this sense. You might make a case that the sky blue sponged walls are reminiscent of those in some upscale café on one of the ritzier resort islands, but I found myself thinking that we could be in any one of scores of Mediterranean-themed restaurants in this city. Yet if sponged blue walls are hardly distinctive in San Francisco these days, neither are they unpleasant, and Yianni's does hold a pair of aces: a garden in the rear and, at the sidewalk, a small set of brushed-steel tables, reposed under an awning in the unlikely event that the sun should burst through.

Assuming it doesn't, you've still got some strong Greek cooking to console you. If you've missed the avgolemono, or lemon-egg, soup that helped make 24th St.'s Panos' famous before it gave way to a Pasta Pomodoro, a cup of Yianni's version ($2.50) will do you just fine and (we were assured by our cheery server), is especially "good when you have a cold!" Which you might well have caught from sitting outside.

A similarly homey case can be made for the immensely fortifying pastitsio ($11.95), a lasagna-like layered slab of tube pasta, meat, cheese, and sauce, with the meat (ground beef) carrying the unmistakably oriental, slightly sweet perfume of nutmeg and cinnamon. It is a traditional Greek dish, right down to the puckeringly lemony rice (if not the strips of lightly sautéed zucchini and carrot) served on the side, but then Greece is a traditional country, and Yianni's represents that groundedness faithfully.

Still, there is the occasional nifty flourish – cubes of marinated lamb, say, baked in a phyllo envelope with a peasanty mix of potatoes, tomatoes, and onions, with kasseri cheese melted in as a binding agent. And there are charming imports from elsewhere, notably the pizza – or "pitsa," as the menu spells it – an unmarked vegetarian version thick with olives and artichokes, and the so-called Greek fries accompanying the gyro. The fries were quite good, though their Greekness was elusive, the only hint being shavings of white cheese mixed in.

The wine list is neither extensive nor pricey, with a number of Greek wines on offer for about $20 a bottle, $5 a glass. Greek viticulture is underrated, considering that it's thousands of years old; it's also short on snobbery – a delight for those of us who like to gallivant as unself-consciously as possible across the savannas of wine lists. In fact, on one visit I gallivanted straight into beer country. We don't (which is to say, I don't) generally think of beer when we think of Greek culture, but Keo ($4), a pilsner from Cyprus, was as good a brew, rich and smooth and just slightly caramelly, as I've had in a long time; and I probably would have thought much the same about the Athenian ($3.50), a lager, if I hadn't drunk it just after the Keo.

Even in that less-than-optimal position, it made a mighty fine match with the saganaki, still asizzle with the last whispers of a fire from heaven.