This weekend, you can visit the annual “A Taste of Greece” festival at St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine (4949 Alton Parkway).
We got to taste some of the offering available at the Festival. Here are some of delicious items you can look forward to.
Chicken Breast — baked chicken breast with Greek seasonings and served with a bread roll. The chicken was moist and very flavorful.
Lamb Chops with Greek French fries — 4 chops with the best fries ever. Seasoned beautifully, the fries remained crisp even after 20-30 minutes.
Gyros — lamb and beef blend served in fluffy, puffy pita bread with tomatoes, onions and tzatziki. Everyone loved this!
Pastitchio (Greek lasagna) — mine was a little bland but my friends liked it.
Loukaniko (Greek sausage) — this was positively my favorite. These homemade Greek sausages are seasoned with herbs and lemon juice. An extra lemon wedge is served alongside and I loved the fresh juice over the tasty sausage.
Spanakopita (spinach and feta pie) — I’ve always loved this item and the phyllo pastry is flaky and the spinach and feta is wonderfully light with the perfect amount of saltiness from the cheese.
Tyropita — similar to the spanakopita but filled with three different cheeses. Really delicious! The pastry if very flaky and the filling not heavy with the right amount of savoriness.
Dolmathes (stuffed grape leaves) — not usually a dish I like when stuffed with rice, but here, it is stuffed with lamb and beef and served with avgolemono (egg and lemon sauce) — by the way, I love the avgolemono soup as well and Christakis in Tustin does a really good one.
Saganaki (Greek brandy-flamed cheese) — this is a highly decadent dish — especially if you love cheese. This Greek cheese resembles haloumi but is not as salty and flambed with brandy and served on pita bread.
Loukoumathes (Greek doughnut holes) — I’m not a big dessert fan and these were a little too sweet for me. When I bit into it it was soft and the honey sauce oozed out of them. My friends loved them though.
We also sampled a variety of Greek sweets such as baklava and rice pudding.
Festival hours are noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 25; and noon to 9 p.m. on Sunday, June 26. Festival admission is just $3 per person with free admission on Saturday, June 25 from noon – 5 p.m. for seniors older than 65 years. Children under the age of 10 are admitted free throughout the three-day festival. Free festival parking will also be available, with complimentary shuttle buses transporting guests from public parking sites in Irvine.
Print the flyer below for free admission to the festival
Anita,
This wonderful yet, George’s Greek Cafe has won my heart forever..welll…maybe for a minutute!
🙂
The pastries are baked in the weeks preceding the Festival using the recipes handed down by our immigrant parents, grandparents and great grandparents. They are lovingly baked in our church kitchen by the women and men of St. Paul’s Church.. The women of our philanthropic ministry, Philoptochos (friends of the poor) have taken on this responsibility for many years and enjoy sharing these delicious pastries with you. Thank you for your visit and we hope you will return next year, 2012 for “A Taste of Greece”. Yassou!