Although Alison Dance has yet to set foot on Greek soil, she absorbed her love of Greek food while living in San Francisco – then she brought it here, to a charming spot she calls Cyprus Cafe (725 E. Second Ave., 970-385-6880).
Housed in a renovated Victorian, Cyprus seats only 30 inside, with a generous space for 55 on the garden patio, where live jazz combos perform on the weekends, weather permitting..
Shaded in part by pear trees – the products of which are bound to be on the fall/winter menu by now – it is a favored lunchtime gathering place for area office workers and, increasingly at lunch and dinner, tourists.
Dance, who also sings with a jazz group from time to time, attended high school in Denver and college in Fort Lewis, so she knew Durango long before she became a restaurateur here.
“I lived in the Bay area for 18 years, met my former husband, who was from Los Alamos, and after almost two decades we decided to return to our roots,” she says. “I had an opportunity to get this property, so I went for it.”
Fair enough. But why name a restaurant after the relatively obscure island of Cyprus?
Simple, she says.
“In San Francisco I’d owned a Greek restaurant called Asimakopoulos, which translates into ‘the silversmith from the town of Kopoulos.’ It was the name before I bought it from the family that originally owned it.
“I must have spelled that word 20 times a day. So when I moved here, I wanted to keep a name that suggested Mediterranean food. I figured if I called it Cyprus, at least I wouldn’t have to spell it.”
Wrong. She began to encounter people who wondered why she had named her restaurant for the cypress tree. She then had to explain that it was named for the history-rich territory that is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean.
“At one point in my life I also lived in New York, and I ate spinach pie everywhere. I just love Greek food.”
After a decade in San Francisco serving food she loved, she couldn’t let go.
“Plus, at the time Durango didn’t have ethnic food other than a Chinese restaurant,” Dance says. “Some people were even suspicious of eggplant. But once they saw I was cooking with local produce and sustainable meat and seafood, they responded to it.”
They’ve been responding since Dance opened in 1996, although there have been good and not-so-good years.
“If the weather’s good, we do well,” Dance adds. “We have a niche here, but you can’t buck weather. If it’s good, we do well; if it’s not, well, not so good.”
Dance tends to the catering side of her business, and chef Robert Blythe mans the kitchen, producing such victuals as herb-grilled trout with pancetta, red quinoa and caramelized shallots; carrot falafel with cumin yogurt; and wild salmon sto fuomo- salmon, goat cheese, stuffed grape leaves and olive-caper tapenade.
Dance’s favorite, spinach pie (spinach and feta wrapped in phyllo dough also called spanokopita), is there too.
The payoff has come not only in customer loyalty but with mentions in such publications as Bon Appetit, Sunset Magazine and The New York Times.
Opa!
-Ellen Sweets
