Restaurant Review: The Athenian Grill in Suisun City, California

Restaurant-hoppers are often looking for that perfect mix of restaurant- excellent view, friendly and quick service, quality food, doable price. We tend to hop from place to place in search of that "perfect spot" where you wish everyone would eat at, but not while you are there.

The Athenian Grill in Suisun City is that place.

As the name suggests, the Athenian Grill is indeed a Greek restaurant. Located on the Suisun City Waterfront on 750 Kellogg Street (about an hour north east of San Francisco), the Athenian Grill can impress you just from walking in the door. The excellent location is perfect for viewing the fishing boats in the harbor and seagulls looking for scraps from the tourists on the ferry boat.

Once you are in, it gets better. Everyone in uniform smiles at you and are ready to seat you on the spot. Where most restaurants may have a minute or two before they even realize you are waiting, this place is in high anticipation of serving you. We came here once before on a slow day and it was like this. Tonight it was very packed with customers and the welcome was consistent.

Not even 30 seconds after being seated, a different waitress was at our table ready to take our drink order and she actually looked happy doing it, regardless of the crowd size. "Was this a dream?" I asked myself. "Is there someone working customer service on a Saturday night that actually enjoys it?" Needless to say, she whisked off with our drink orders and promptly returned within two minutes.

The dinner menu seemed just a dollar or so over what I would expect from a Greek restaurant. Really, how many versions of souvlaki and gyro can you sell? We all know there are the various Greek hard-to-pronounce items on the list, but I would imagine most would order some sort of gyro or meat-on-a skewer complete with pita bread.

At the suggestion of my wife I ordered-yes-a souvlaki with shrimp and vegetable skewers. For $14, I could have this with Greek rice, a cup of soup (I chose clam chowder), and pita slices. She ordered a - sigh- gyro plate (of lamb) while the kids got fish nuggets and hamburgers with fries.

The waitress took our order and our menus and before the kids and I could get two games into tic-tac-toe my wife's salad and my clam chowder showed up. I can't vouch for the salad, but the clam chowder tasted wonderfully spicy. There was just enough kick in it to send the clams running for cover under a thick, cream-based soup. This wasn't standard filler chowder full of chewy potatoes and tasteless base. This tasted pretty close to the real deal chowder I had in Bangor, Maine.

Our main dishes were equally impressive. The Athenian Grill has it down when it comes to flavoring up their shrimp. These were some of the biggest I've seen in the East Bay and they tasted truly grilled with a deep, onion and chive flavoring with a dash of sea salt. I wasn't expecting to see the veggies on a separate skewer from the shrimp, but nonetheless the meal was well done.

My wife's gyro plate was beyond the average. Her servings were more than average, and the lamb meat was not tough at all, which can happen if a Greek restaurant chooses to reheat and slice. This was a totally different animal, tender in the mouth and easy on the tongue.

The only food issue we had was with my daughter's hamburger. My son's fish nuggets were very cool-they were shaped like starfish and guppies- but my girl's burger was actually two little mini-burgers of some unidentifiable meat. They looked like little grey patties of death, and she made a face like they tasted as bad as they looked. However, that wonderful service kicked in, where our waitress was happy to replace it with some of that delicious gyro meat with no extra charge.

Yes, the Athenian Grill is an excellent spot to dine and one of my best dinner experiences so far in the east bay area. You can't beat the service and the food is a quality product, consumed in a beautiful locale. It is truly a restaurant hopper's dream come true.