Just inside the door at Angelina's Kitchen, the daily specials are listed on a whiteboard. On any given day, you might find pastitsio, green chile chicken enchiladas, collards braised with carrot and sweet potato, and molasses cookies among the options. It's an eclectic offering, to be sure, but it makes sense when you get to know the restaurant's owner, Angelina Koulizakis-Battiste. And it's hard to imagine walking through the door and not getting to know Koulizakis-Battiste, whose personality is as agreeable as her food.
There's always a selection of the Greek dishes that Koulizakis-Battiste learned to cook from her mother and aunts in Greece. The Southwestern specialties are souvenirs of the 15 years she lived in New Mexico. Woven throughout the offering, the names of local farmers and artisans who contributed to the menu (those collards are from Okfuskee Farm, and Judy Thompson baked the cookies) attest to the owner's friendly relationships with the local community.
That community includes pretty much everyone who walks in the door. It isn't unusual for Koulizakis-Battiste to be seen tearing off a fist-size hunk of pumpkin bread and offering it to a first-time customer to sample, amiably teasing a young boy who has stopped in for an after-school snack and greeting a woman who walks in with a basket of lemons like an old friend, proudly noting to all present that the lemons are locally grown (in a hothouse!). All this within the half hour it takes to enjoy a local-beef gyro and a piece of baklava, both as good as any you'll find in these parts.
