Reviewing Our Mom Eugenia: True Greek flavors in suburban Washington D.C.

We’re at Our Mom Eugenia, a family-owned Greek restaurant in Great Falls, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Our waiter is Greek. The menu names the dishes in Greek. The wines are Greek, the bar is stocked with exotic Greek liqueurs. The food is lusciously, authentically Greek.  

You know you’re in an authentic Greek restaurant when the saganaki is on fire. A block of kefalograviera cheese, seared in ripping hot cast iron, is doused in brandy tableside and lit, the flames licking and creating a brown crust. The waiter douses the fire with a squeeze of lemon. Our saganaki is delicious, crunchy on top, and oozy at the center, its top layer popping with sweetness and acidity.    

There weren’t many customers during our mid-afternoon weekend visit to Our Mom Eugenia, so we sat at the bar to get some talk time with the staff. We asked our waiter, a first-generation American of two Greek parents, to make recommendations so we could taste the best, most authentic dishes on the menu. That’s how we wound up with the saganaki.  

It’s also how we wound up with the octopus, a dish ubiquitous in the Greek islands and on menus of Greek restaurants everywhere. My wife and I know from grim experience that it’s often overcooked and tough. Ours showed up tender and with a lovely sear, mild in flavor, and finished in the traditional manner with oregano and lemon.  

At this point, we were having so much eating fun we changed plans: Enjoy a lunch now by sampling a lot of dishes from the menu, and pack away enough food for a dinner (or two) at home. 

Fakes, Dakos, and more traditional Greek dishes at Our Mom Eugenia

And so we continued: Fakes, a hearty, flavorsome lentil soup with tomato, garlic, and bay leaf, was delicious when dipping the grilled bread served alongside. Next came dakos — essentially Greek bruschetta, with grated tomato, feta, and red onion topping a firm paximadi (double-baked bread of barley flour, a specialty in Crete).  

Our Grecian adventure continued with a trio of dips: the classic tzatziki (strained yogurt with cucumber and dill), fava (a paste of the fresh beans, with the familiar touches of olive oil and lemon), and skordalia. This last was entirely new to us, essentially creamy garlic mashed potatoes served as a dip. Like the other two, it was a delight when scooped up with pita. 

Amethystos wine and Greek spirits

As for the drinks: My wife loves sauvignon blanc, preferably the acidic, fruit-scented style of New Zealand. The barkeep poured tastes of three Greek sauvignon blanc-based wines. My wife chose Amethystos, a classic Bordeaux-style sauvignon blanc tweaked with a bit of assyrtiko, a white Greek grape. It was tight and bright and full of citrus aromas, with a backdrop of stony soil.   

I asked the waiter to whip up two cocktails with Greek spirits. He produced a sort of Agean mojito, with mastiha liqueur as the base, backed by lime juice and mint.  The second one combined Kastron Elion, a Greek vodka distilled from green olives, with dry vermouth and cherry liqueur. I’m a cocktail geek who’s been around a lot of adult beverages, but both offered refreshingly distinctive flavors.   

We could have stayed all afternoon, and we nearly did. But we couldn’t escape without trying one of the restaurant’s lamb entrees as our “dessert.” Our waiter steered us to one of the day’s specials. It appeared as a generous portion of two chunks of bone-in shank, braised until falling-apart tender, served with roasted potatoes and tinged with ouzo. It was rich and delicious. 

Our Mom Eugenia Final Review

Our Mom Eugenia can be a pretty good value, with most appetizers and mezze under $15 and served in generous portions. Had we not decided to turn our visit into a wild tastefest we could easily have split three of the small plates and been quite happy. Entrees are more expensive, most in the $30 range but a few creeping to $40 and above. But they are definitely splittable.  

Could anything be improved at Our Mom Eugenia? Of what we tried, only the pita was a disappointment. At some authentic Mediterranean places, the pitas come out warm and puffy, and it’s a joy to tear them open, releasing their steam. Here they were presented as a basket of serviceable pre-sliced triangles finished with olive oil and a shake of oregano.  

That’s a small shortcoming. Our Mom Eugenia is a true Greek find out in the Virginia suburbs, authentic and welcoming and warm. And for the record, the food stood up when reheated at home. For two more meals.