RESTAURANT REVIEW: Inotheke

606 Broadway Ave., Ste. 101 | Santa Monica, CA 90401 | 310-458-3366 | inothekela.com | Prices: $$

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER | Contributing Writer

When you think of the Westside’s culinary scene, awash in Italian ristorantes, sushi houses, Mexican joints and assorted hipster-ish experiments, Greek is not a genre of cuisine that jumps to the frontal lobe.

All the more reason for Inotheke, a quiet, dimly lit gem in the heart of downtown Santa Monica. Housed within the street-level storefront of an office building with an unlit sign basking in the reflected glow of its flanking neighbors’ signs, Inotheke recedes from view at night. Blink and you may miss it from the outside driving past the intersection of Broadway and Sixth, but trust us, you won’t want to miss it from the inside, as this new estiatorio —only three Mondays old when we visited in mid-December—suddenly all but owns Greek fare on the Westside of Los Angeles.

A compound word meaning “wine case,” Inotheke is the brainchild of founder and chef Carlos Tomazos, who previously owned the acclaimed (and now defunct) gastropub Waterloo & City on Culver City’s restaurant row, where Chef Brendan Collins worked his culinary magic for nearly five years.

This time around, Tomazos felt compelled to create a high-end Greek cuisine with Cyprus flourishes because it’s the epicurean road less traveled in West LA.

On a chilly Santa Monica night at the atmospheric eatery, the evening unspooled as beautifully and cinematically as a Mihalis Kakogiannis film as the gracious, hands-on Tomazos brought us a few bright and refreshing appetizer plates: Greek Salad ($12) featuring fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper and onion with olives and feta cheese; Pickled Octopus ($14) with mushrooms, celery and coriander counterprogrammed by thin slices of chewy tentacle; and a wonderful Eggplant-Tahini Salad ($6) replete with shallots, parsley and cherry tomato.

These aesthetically pleasing plates were just the beginning, as the night proceeded with Shrimp Saganaki ($17), large prawns doused in a blanket of tomato sauce with ouzo and feta.

Accompanying this round: Pork Youvarlakia ($14), three mouth-watering boulettes doused in a lemon sauce with a smattering of wild rice.

The plot really thickened when out came the Short Rib Stifado (“stew”), which Tomazos explained is usually made with any number of different meats. In this case, the braised beef ($16), flavored by a red wine sauce and shallots that added a complexity of flavors while remaining subtle, proved savory and satisfying. Its eye-pleasing architecture on the plate added to the enjoyment.

The evening’s tastiest highlight? A perfect plate of Lamb & Orzo ($16), hallowed morsels of meat atop a large bed of buttery orzo with cooked tomato and shards of Parmesan. This was the plate we could have kept eating all night.

Beyond what we ordered, there are plenty of chicken, vegetable, pork and seafood entrees to be had. Depending on your palate, you may want to try Roast Chicken Thigh Oreganato ($14) accompanied by lemon potatoes; Potted Duck ($12) with walnuts and orange; Cod Fritters ($14); or Salmon Imam ($16) with eggplant, zucchini, feta and capers.

What would a Greek restaurant worth its mettle be without a nice, hot plate of Mousaka ($14) and Baklava for dessert? Preceding dessert, Tomazos unveiled a layered rectangle of the former, their signature dish; its lasagna-like layers featuring chopped ground beef across a bed of eggplant with zucchini and a sort of béchamel.

By now, we knew that dessert would be no slouch. The traditional, honey-coated Baklava, piled high with strata of flakey pastry goodness, did not disappoint, especially when accompanied by Inotheke’s sturdy cup of cappuccino. Ditto the other dessert option: Galaktoboureko, a creamier but no less sweeter custard-based affair.

If alcohol is your thing, bartender Jennifer Alfaro is at your service with a full range of cocktails and spirits, including a variety of Greek wines such as the bottle of Apanta red we enjoyed with our meal.

Exiting following her first meal at Inotheke, former Palisadian Michelle Oyler praised the restaurant’s “friendly atmosphere” and hailed the “easy, light and approachable” food she enjoyed.

One table over, Earth Friendly Products head Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks of Huntington Park and a fellow Greek-American friend were treating a pal to a belated birthday party. “A Green Story,” Nick Agiashvili’s 2012 film starring Billy Zane, Shannon Elizabeth and Malcolm McDowell, told the story of her late father, Van Vlahakis, a pioneer in the green industry who left Greece a half-century ago with 22 dollars in his pocket, only to create the mega-successful Earth Friendly Products, a company producing environmentally friendly cleaning products.

Vlahakis-Hanks and her friends, who know Greek food inside out from their many travels to Greece, gave their first visit to Tomazos’ nascent restaurant their highest marks. Vlahakis-Hanks said she requested Taramosalata (a Greek caviar of carp roe), which was not on the menu, and Tomazos whipped up a plate for her party.

Ultimately, if this new restaurant is good enough for these Greek scholars, perhaps that is all the validation you need confirming that Inotheke is worth the trek down PCH to Santa Monica.