Agnanti

Assured of good food, reasonable prices and an Aegean taverna café theme, local couples happily wait hand in hand for Agnanti’s patio tables overlooking Astoria Park. This winsome restaurant’s part-Greek, part-Turkish “Constantinople cuisine” deftly combines lamb and seafood with touches of almond, cinnamon and pine nuts. The menu emphasizes meze, or appetizers, and everyone seems to order a hearty, delicious phyllo-crusted meat pie. The intrepid move on to Greek-style main courses such as fried or grilled fish, tomato-bathed soutzoukakia meatballs or garides liana, a quintet of behemoth shrimp in a splendid lemony sauce. Regulars knowingly pair the gratis honey-cake–and-yogurt house dessert with semisweet, ruby-red mavrodaphne wine from Greece’s Peloponnese islands.