5175 Transit Rd., Clarence NY 14221
Web: Spilios Family Restaurant
Phone: 716.633.2040
Rating:
[learn more]Pros:
Affordable Greek and American meals, with a menu that includes typical Greek options and a sandwich-heavy American side, focusing on budget-conscious choices.
Cons:
Individual items range from okay to unimpressive, with some legitimate disappointments and less than fresh ingredients. Pricing, not flavor or quality, is the single biggest saving grace.
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Amherst Clarence Greek
"Our total two-person check was a reasonable $31 before tip; not cheap or really good, the meal was generally filling and decent. If that's all you want, Spilios is a fair pick."
Some restaurants just don't stand out from the pack. Case in point: Spilios Family Restaurant, a 20-year-old Greek and American restaurant on Transit Road in Clarence, which offers a budget-conscious menu and caters mostly to an older crowd. Our first visit months ago wasn't good enough to bring us back, but since we prefer to have a couple of meals before issuing ratings, we dropped in again just to see if anything had changed. In short, it hadn't. The highest praise we can offer for this place is that it serves filling meals that won't break the bank; even so, there are many other local Greek restaurants we'd pick instead.
From the short list of appetizers, we used our second visit to pick typical favorites, starting with the $6.50 Spanakopita: the plate arrived with an appropriately sized piece of the spinach, filo dough, and feta cheese pie, baked to slightly more than a golden brown with some charred edges - thankfully not enough to ruin the dough. While it wasn't bad, we'd describe what we received as closer to a casserole than a classic Spanakopita, the bottom two-thirds or three-quarters a blocky clump of cheese and spinach, and the top layers too hard to pierce with anything but a knife. Scattered on the plate were some of the driest, least appealing peperoncini we've ever seen or tasted, and some similarly weathered-looking olives; it didn't exactly inspire confidence in the rest of the meal.
A second appetizer, the Dolmades ($7) - rice-stuffed grape leaves - arrived clammy cold, as if they'd just been taken out of the fridge, where they'd lost much of their inner moisture. On the plus side, they were about right in size and carried the traditional lemon and herb flavors we expected, but eating them just wasn't fun; the contrast with the versions served at places such as Natalie's was huge. They were chewy, cold with each bite, and just too dry.
Entrees were similarly mixed. We were more pleased with the Lamb Chops ($13), a full meal made from six chops prepared medium rare, as requested, and served with mint jelly; the chops were essentially unflavored but were plenty tender and not offensively fatty. Better yet, the plate included a side of broiled vegetables - carrots, green beans, and cauliflower - and though we ordered french fries, we wound up with Greek potatoes instead. They were more oily and heavily sauced with a gravy than we've ever had them elsewhere, but they tasted good. An included Greek salad was better than one we'd ordered on our prior visit, with the right proportions of feta, lettuce, and fresh tomato slices, plus a couple of fresh olives and some more of the dried-out peperoncini.
Not so hot was the Beef Souvlaki dinner ($13), served with the same general side items, save for a fine four-sectioned pita replacing the extra vegetables on the lamb plate. The beef was amazingly overcooked, chewy to the point of unpleasantness, and neither of us wanted to bother finishing it all. It could have been reheated beef; it could have just been low-grade meat, but we both wound up with a stomachache for some reason shortly after the meal.
We wouldn't blame the dessert, a bowl of rice pudding, though it was something close to shocking by Greek restaurant standards: the first Greek rice pudding we can recall that was around 95% pudding and 5% rice. All goo, there didn't seem to be a single full grain of rice in the bowl, but between the creamy white dessert and the dashes of nutmeg on top, it at least tasted generally like what we were hoping for, if not specifically.
It's worth a brief note that - like the Wehrle and Sheridan Family Restaurants located in other parts of the suburbs - the Spilios menu includes some other simple fare, much of it inexpensive: melts, wraps, clubs, and burgers are almost all in the $8 category and served with french fries, with meatloaf, spaghetti and grilled chicken breast plates offered at $7.50 or less for seniors. Additional desserts, such as baklava and apple pie, are offered along with coffee for a set price of $5 each, and there are a handful of soups in the $4 range. Our advice would be not to expect much.
Rating one and a half stars, Spilios isn't a place we'd recommend to our readers or really have a need to revisit at any point in the future; the only saving graces of what we'd ultimately describe as a truly mediocre meal were the fine service - aided by an apparently well-organized but not especially talented kitchen - and the bill. On the day of our second visit, the restaurant was running a promotion that included one appetizer, two entrees, and either two rice puddings or one alternative dessert for $20, bringing our total two-person check down to a reasonable $31 before tip. The meal wasn't cheap, and it wasn't good, but it was generally filling and decent. If that's all you're looking for, Spilios is a fair pick.
