As we are huge Greek AND Indian food fans, we decided to try Poppi's Anatolia while passing through at dinner time. From the street it looks like a little hole in the wall place, and the sign is somewhat hidden by trees, so it is easy to miss.
Inside was a nice little restaurant space that was inviting, but not "welcome to our home!" inviting that a lot of Greek places tend to be. An eclectic collection of music was playing softly adding to the ambiance.
Upon being seated you're served a couple pieces of bread as an little appetizer. While it looked good, it was overpoweringly laden with fennel.
Dinner choices were:
Potato and onion bhajias
Chicken curry special
Thali plate (vegetarian dishes)
Baklava
and Ninkasi IPA
The bhajias kind of set the tone for the meal. First, these are not typical bhajias, veggies covered in garbonzo flour, and deep fried. They were actually compacted cakes of potatoes, onions, and jalapeños, covered in garbonzo flour and deep fried. The jalapeños were a pleasant surprise for me, but I could see some people not enjoying that. The coconut chutney was OK, but less of a chutney and more a pile of spiced shredded coconut. It really didn't mesh flavor wise with the bhajias and seemed to be something more along the lines of "something different for the sake of being different."
The chicken curry was very bland. There was barely any curry flavor at all. The chicken in the dish was rather dry considering it was surrounded by a thick sauce and plenty of vegetables. The other distracting thing is that the dish had a lot of broccoli in it, and not just small pieces, but huge pieces that were sometimes bigger than the chicken pieces. But over all for being a curry, it just wasn't as flavorful as I was expecting.
The Basamati rice served on the side was very good though. It soaked up the flavors of the dish above and amplified them a little.
The Thali plate was a little better, but still fell short in a lot of ways. The spinach portion tasted like it was unseasoned. The Bindi Bhaji was spicy but unflavored, while the Bombay Aloo was slightly spicier, but devoid of just as much flavor. All of this was served with a side of plain, Greek Yogurt.
Both these meals were served with small bowls of four different types of chutneys. There was a tomato chutney and pineapple chutney, both of which seemed to just be diced and unseasoned. There was a peanut based chutney that tasted a lot like a Thai Peanut sauce. And the fourth, I don't even remember because it was so bland.
Now, if there is one desert weakness I have, it is a well made baklava. The version served here was passable, but nothing I'd go out of my way for. The phyllo dough was crispy and fell off the top easily instead of being moist. It was hard to cut with a fork, there wasn't enough honey in the recipe, and the filling was hard and dry.
I really wanted to love Poppi's Anatolia. Perhaps I was expecting too much based on other reviews here, and the concept of mixing Greek and Indian flavors intrigued me. But there is a right way to mix flavors, and a wrong way. Poppi's definitely went the wrong way. My best guess is that they muted the Indian flavors to keep from overpowering the Greek. But instead of mixing together, the food just seems to lay there. read more