Kiflis Restaurant  (Second Visit)
Akron, Ohio    Date of Visit:  01/12/17      Facebook Page
 Click Here for Original Visit

Our first trip to Kiflis Restaurant and Bakery was about as close to disaster as we’ve gotten. They never even really came up as an option when we started revisiting a few places after years had gone by. We’re into second chances though and back at their new location. It’s a nicer place, the young man who served us was polite and seemed to be running the front alone.

The food, well…there’s a reason for second chances. The burek (I’ve only ever had it here) is still a cheesy surprise of a hundred layers. The gyro was so much better than the first journey. Tasty and hot lambloaf with crispy edges was stacked into the warm pita and topped with the required accouterment. I had the deeply seasoned Cevapi sausages for the first time at New Era Restaurant and thought I’d give em another go. Kiflis’ version is much milder and surprise!, it comes as a sandwich. I don’t know how you are supposed to eat this thing, 10 rolly-polly sausages are difficult if not impossible to keep from rolling around. They are good, even if mild, and the sandwich introduced me to whatever kind of bread they arrived between. Dunno what it is…it is really flavorful, fluffy on the inside and super crisp and chewy on the outside, super. It ain’t ever going to hang on to those sausages but you can spill everything all over the plate, tear off some bread, wrap a link and top it with the onion, tomato, lettuce and yogurt on the plate. Soooo much better than our first trip.
 

Flaky Treat
 

Filled With Savory Cheese Mix
 

So Much Better Than The First
 

And Loaded To The Brim
 

What Kind Of Bread Is This?!?
 

It's Not Going To Keep These In
 

The sign out front says Walnut Strudel made them famous…it’s good…my Mom’s friend makes it better around the holidays but it’ nice to have a hook up year round. We tried another piece of baklava, turns out the first time wasn’t an accident, it’s their thing. Baklava stew. It’s soaked with the honey and too much for me but to each their own.
 

Pretty Good Strudel
 

Wet
 

Kiflis Restaurant & Bakery
 Akron, Ohio        Date of Visit  08/29/12    
 http://www.facebook.com/KiflisRestaurantAndBakery

So, for the second time we tried to dine at a new recommendation in Cuyahoga Falls to find once again that Sundays…and now days for that matter is not a good time to visit. The first time we left the empty parking lot we meandered aimlessly around The Falls looking for another option. During our reconnoiter we passed an odd looking place on Graham Rd with a Greek name and quite the proclamation on a sign box on the side of the building. It read “Stop in for best Gyro”. Now I love me some Yee-rohs and as soon as we were again facing a locked door we were headed up to Graham Rd.
 

Reminds Me A Little Of Now Defunct Ala Mode, Except For The Gyros
 

The restaurant sits on the corner of a strip mall and gets more interesting once you walk in the door. Obviously furnished with excess home cast offs or garage sale finds, it is cleaner than the first glance would suggest…as long as you don’t study the couch or the arms of the chair. The couple of tables and chairs seems tidy and we decide to stay instead of follow the example of the cars that are pulling up to the drive up window for their treats. We approached the mismatched counters and display cases to the lone woman behind the counter. There was someone else in the back but they never left the ovens.

While we waited for things to heat we checked out the varied offerings in the small grocery area, everything from candies from other countries to Paula Dean jams. We got a couple of beverages from the reach-in near the door. All cans are the same price from soda to energy drinks. Steph had a Coke and I as a über-tart San Pelligrino Lemonata. Hey, it’s all the same price.

It took a short bit and everything was delivered to the table. We had ordered a turkey ham and cheese sandwich, a cheese burek (more on that in a sec) and of course the gyro.

Let’s just get to the point. The gyro was what lured me in. It was also my least favorite by far. Steve’s super sauced gyro at the West Side Market Cleveland, Bills glorious gyro on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, the football sized tank from Hanini’s …or a number of other options…the sign is at best naive.

Not only was the lamb meatloaf relatively cold it was obvious the cone was rotating in front of a heatless contraption, observed in the lack of texture the surface tends to take on from the element as it rolls by. Add to that the thin and lackluster sauce, the meat to other ratio and the overall plainness of the whole mess…it is a long way from good and far from best. I’m nearly ashamed to admit what I did enjoy. At least half of it anyways.
 

"It's Like A Sauna Up In Here. No Mas Pantalones."
 

Lack of shame first. They had a sign inside the door about their burek. It fortunately came with a description, since this was my first encounter. A Turkish original it is made of tubes of flaky dough, rolled into an almost spiraling seashell shape stuffed with either cheese, beef, spinach and cheese or apples. They had the cheese version fresh so we went with those. I was a little leery of the cheese combo. Feta and COTTAGE? It is much better than it might sound. The dough is flaky and the saltiness of the Feta plays well with the simple dairy fattiness of the curds. I would have taken an apple home to try later but I had more errands to run and it didn’t seem like it would last long in a saddlebag hovering over the exhaust.

What really surprised me was Steph’s sandwich. First I was horrified and then I was ashamed. I thought she had ordered a turkey and ham sandwich. What she had ordered was a turkey-ham sandwich. When it arrived I had difficulty averting my gaze from the unnatural and off putting color of the “meat”. If Expo made a dry erase marker labeled “meat” they would need interference from Disney and Stan Lee to produce this stuff. She asked if I wanted a taste…I heard NO in my head but I have been making her taste all sorts of stuff for a long time…and she hadn’t choked on the first bite…so I said yes. The roll was incredible (did they bake it there?), the cheese was alright, the ham impersonation was salty and a little smoky and the dressing on the greens did what the tzatziki sauce completely failed to do on the gyro. Much better than expected.
 

We took a couple pieces of baklava to go and we should have paid attention to the more rational side of our brains. There was a sign on the display case that reported the fridge as broken and you should ask for some of their treats, including the baklava.

The thing is…the pan of baklava is sitting there in the bottom of the broken fridge…where our two pieces came from. We attempted to eat it in the car and would have been better to just drop it in the trash on the way out. It was a disaster. Imagine biting into a lightly sweetened, sweat soaked kitchen sponge that runs down your chin, or onto your steering wheel, or pants, or seat.

The nuts were burned, the supposed to be flaky Phyllo was a soggy mess, and it was a horrible way to finish an adventure. We didn’t try the walnut strudel that made them “famous” or other things on the menu…if you go, you might be best suited ordering things that sound the least attractive (Mauve Meat, for instance) and stay far away from the baklava.