Nick and I went to Daytona Beach last week to buy an RV (we are crazy people). More about that later..maybe. Anywhoo, whenever we go down south to the FL beaches we relish in the large expansive ocean view, daiquiri’s, long walks on the beach, etc.etc. Food unfortunately is not one of those things. A baked potato is a godsend out there for me in the realm of fried nothing food and maybe a wilted ‘garden salad’ at some crab shack I get outnumbered in going to. Well, maybe Daytona Beach is different, or maybe (more likely) we got lucky. Nick was in our hotel room flipping through that old crappy/wonderful book of city ads; restaurants, parasailing, boats, etc, etc. when he decided we need to go to this greek place he found nestled in there called “Fresko Restaurant & Grill”.
Driving up we had doubts, the pretty looking awning area was right on a main road and the place was dead (in all fairness, it was 6:30 but we were starving so decided to do the old person thing of eating ridiculously early). But, we decided to go ahead and give it a shot and by the time we got settled out on the patio we actually found the ambiance to be just what we were looking for, laid back and lovely. We were a little overwhelmed at the options we had which is a really nice treat for a veg. It was all pretty straightforward stuff you would expect from a greek place, gyros, ‘greek fries’, spreads galore, and then a few interesting less common traditional items like the Avgolemono, egg & lemon soup or the Galaktoboureko, a creamy custard filo pastry dessert (which I probably should have ordered).
We decided to get the spanakopita, a small greek salad and 3 dips; the spicy feta, hummus and tzaziki…and made our minds up to monitor expectations. After just the first few bites, we discovered that this was some mighty fine food. The spanikopita was the best I’ve ever had – I’ve always liked spanakopita theoretically but this made me realize what it should be like every time, perfectly seasoned spinach mixture in a paper thin crispy filo shell. The salad was dressed with a delicious dressing and each dip was perfect. Because of the freshness of everything each spice and flavour was distinctly showing up.
I think one of the telltale signs of a good restaurant is staff that is excited to talk to you about the food and restaurant. We ended up chatting with our server Chris who was definitely exemplary in this + we got to learn a lot of cool deets about the restaurant. They special order many of their ingredients such as that fat wedge of fantastic feta you see pictured, but also have access to the freshest spices as someone involved in the restaurant (husband? father?) owns a spice stall on the Daytona Flea + Farmers Market. Apparently the spicy feta dip takes hours and hours to make as they go through the process of roasting jalapenos, cooling, de-seeding, etc, etc. and the chickpeas are all hand peeled! Chris kept talking about the elusive ‘she’ with all of this, I am thinking that the ‘she’ is the chef/owner, so bravo whomever you are! It’s such a special treat to go to a restaurant where the food tastes homemade but refined, better than your own attempt. Each thing we tried had a beautiful flavour that implied whoever made this knows what they are doing and truly enjoys doing it. Simple, thoughtful and flavourful.
Now, I would usually make a matter of returning a couple of times before testifying like this but we had to leave the next day. Other dishes I would have loved to have tried were a fried feta saganaki with sesame seeds and honey and of course the dolmas because I have a bit of an adoration of a good dolma.
If you ever go to Daytona beach, to buy an rv or just for some fun, you should try this place and see if you like it as much as we did. I think I will be returning one day. I got to visit in the nice and quiet off season, chat with the locals about the nearby springs (with MANITEE in them?!?), whooped Nicks ass at some putt putt and finally got to eat something great in Florida.
