Little Plates, Big Impact
By Dina Cheney
Photography by John Fortunato and Michael Polito

Visit this cozy, intimate White Plains restaurant and you’ll feel as if you’re in the dining room of the owners, the Kringas family. While Voula Kringas does the cooking, hosting, and some waitressing, her sister, Amalia Boumis, prepares the desserts. Voula’s son, Nick, one of the restaurant’s owners, tells me, “My mom does all of the cooking here. Before, we had so much excess food that we figured we should open a restaurant.” It’s a good thing they did; since Niko’s is manna to small-plates lovers. Virtually half of the menu is made up of orektika (appetizers), which can be assembled into a meal and shared. Nick especially recommends the various dips (includingkafteri, with spicy feta; taramasalata, with Greek caviar; tsatsiki, with yogurt, cucumber, and garlic; hummus; and skordalia, with potatoes and garlic); saganaki (flamed Greek cheese); gigantes (giant beans in tomato sauce), octopodi (grilled octopus with an olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing), and spanakopita (spinach pie).
Pair your victuals with wine. Niko’s beverage menu includes about 40 Greek bottles—several of which can be ordered by the glass—as well as retsinas, white wine aged in oak with pine.
Dina Cheney, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education, is a freelance writer, tasting host, and former cooking teacher. Her book, Tasting Club (DK Publishing/Penguin), is out now.

GRECIAN GOODIES
By John Bruno Turiano
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHIL MANSFIELD

For similarly gratifying Greek fare served at a less hectic pace and enjoyed in a space with more elbow room, try
NIKO’S GREEK TAVERNA
(287 Central Ave., White Plains, 914-686-6456;
www.nikostaverna.com), owned by Nick and George Kringas. Kringas is a name you'll have to get used to here, as there's a Kringas seemingly working every position. There's a Kringas cook, Kringas servers, and a Kringas bartender. And the family feeling spills over, and philoxenta (that's Greek hospitality) is in full effect from the instant you check your coat until the last bit of karldopita (an ethereal, syrupy-sweet walnut cake) and nectareous, honeydrenched baklava, have been devoured. Order saganaki, a spectacular plate consisting of Greek sheep's-milk cheese, just to hear enthusiastic shouts of "Opa!" when it isalighted with brandy anddoused with lemon tableside. Where else can you get such culinary theatrics for a mere $7.95? There are moderately priced entrees such as chicken or pork souvlaki with yellow rice and vegetables, and pastitsio, the "Greek lasagna," with tubed macaroni and bechamel cream sauce. But we suggest filling up on a selection of appetizers, e.g., the gigantes, plump, oversized lima beans in a light tomato sauce; fresh dandelions in olive oil and lemon; stuffed grape leaves, and grilled octopus in a
redwine vinegar. Along with warm pita, little bowls of fruity, almond-shaped kalamata olives, and perhaps a glass of Greek iced tea or, better still, ouzo, it's a meal fit for King Agamemnon.