Spanakopita

A Greek spinach pie with phyllo, Feta cheese and spinach.

The original name of Myra’s restaurant was Dionysus Restaurant, named after the Greek god known for having a good time and enjoying life. She absolutely loved Greek food and wanted her restaurant to reflect those two things. When she first moved to Cincinnati, she frequented and became fast friends of the owner of the only other Greek restaurant in Cincinnati, Sebastian’s Greek Restaurant. The first thing her restaurant had on the menu along with Greek salads and espresso coffee, was gyros. Alex Sebastian and mom shared a refrigerated storage space and sometimes they would combine forces to get a truck load of gyros meat from Chicago, before you could get it in Cincinnati. Sebastian’s still sells gyros in Price Hill in Cincinnati.

Then Myra became more interested in foods from other countries and vegetarian foods. To reflect her desire to expand the menu, she closed the restaurant for a few months and reopened as Myra’s Dionysus. Greek food was still her original love though, and she continued to offer many Greek dishes on the expanded menu.

How many pieces of spanakopita have been served from Myra’s restaurant?  Thousands! I too, have made it many times for events and luncheons when employed by the Cactus Club. Myra’s version is such a great recipe. I tend to make it when I am going to have company, so the recipe here is for 12 good sized pieces, or 24 smaller servings. It freezes well, or you can cut the recipe in half, and put it in in smaller pan, if it’s just for your family. Spoiler alert: This is not a cheap recipe. Feta cheese is expensive and phyllo dough is sometimes hard to find (look in the freezer section near the frozen pies). But it’s worth it!

Myra always bought feta cheese in 5-gallon buckets, so I have no idea what kind she used. This led me to do a taste test of Feta with my husband James, to see what the differences were between sheep’s milk, cow’s milk and Greek vs American made.

I discovered that just as there is an appellation of origin for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Champagne, there is also a mark for authentic Greek Feta that looks like the seal shown here. The American Feta was creamy, but not as much “Feta” taste. Sheep’s milk definitely had the best flavor. We recommend the sheep’s milk Greek Feta with the appellation mark as the best out of all we tasted.

There are a lot of good videos on how to work with phyllo dough if it’s new to you. I wish I had a video of Myra’s friend Gladys making spanakopita. She took the job very seriously and trained a lot of staff on how to make Greek food like they were Greek!