Evvia Estiatorio, Palo Alto

I landed up at Evvia Estiatorio in Palo Alto in the strangest of circumstances. A couple of colleagues and I were visiting the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) to debug a customer router (For those who haven't read my profile, I work for Cisco Systems). University Avenue, Palo Alto is a great place for upscale dining and since we were working so hard and all on the customer router, actually missing a company picnic on that day, I felt we deserved a good (read expensive) meal at the company's expense :). My colleague suggested Evvia and after a quick search on the internet, it seemed like a great place that satisfied all my requirements for lunch that day - good non Indian food, walking distance from PAIX and upscale. The decor and ambience at this place is very upscale and charming. I loved the way they had tried to mix the rustic with the modern in terms of decor. I would rate this the best greek I've had in the Bay Area (Thea on Santana Row comes pretty close). For starters, we ordered fried calamari and flatbread. The flatbread was awesome with caremellized onions, tomatoes and feta cheese as toppings. For the main course, I had the Mostaciolli which is braised lamb served with pasta and cheese. The lamb was very well done, exactly the way I like it an the cheese was an excellent complement. For dessert we had phyllo stuffed with warm custard. On the whole a very satisfying meal and the 3 hard hours of debugging all seemed worthwhile. They had an excellent wine selection but having wine when visiting a customer site to debug a problem would have been a little too much !!!! I'm definitely going back to Evvia in a more relaxed mood ...