Bluto’s isn’t very Greek. It is very good

Editor’s note: This week and next, we’re counting down our favorite new Portland restaurants of 2022. At No. 6: Bluto’s, a (loosely) Greek-inspired restaurant featuring hearth-grilled souvlaki, tahini-rich hummus and fantastic flatbread.

At this precise moment, it’s hard to think about Bluto’s without thinking about Sarah Pliner, the talented chef killed while riding her bike to work in October.

Pliner wasn’t a partner at Bluto’s, or even a member of the opening team. But she came aboard early, and when she was in the kitchen, the food always seemed to have a little extra pop. She died with plans for her upcoming solo restaurant spread out on her coffee table, riding through a dangerous intersection near her house that the state has stubbornly refused to fix. Her death has left an absence.

But Bluto’s will carry on. The Southeast Portland restaurant is the latest project from Rick Gencarelli, a former East Coast chef who moved his family to Portland in 2009 and opened a little food cart called Lardo (ever heard of it?). That’s where Gencarelli first served his outrageously good porchetta sandwiches, played his music loud and tried to catch the ear of Kurt Huffman, the ChefStable restaurateur who had already made a splash backing Ping and Grüner.

You might know the rest. Gencarelli and Huffman teamed up. The Lardo cart became a Lardo restaurant, then four, while a spin-off pasta spot, Grassa, grew to several locations of its own. Both restaurants serve better, more interesting food than their price points suggest. Yet comparatively, Bluto’s still feels like a passion project, a chance for Gencarelli to get back to a more hands-on approach than he’s had time for while scaling up his other businesses.

“There might be another Bluto’s one day, but we’ll never run it out of a commissary,” Gencarelli said this week, referring to the commercial kitchens that help fuel even smaller chains. “Being able to work directly with the food, that’s what makes this special.”

Before it opened in the former Accanto space, Gencarelli described Bluto’s as “Greek-inspired,” a place to come for grilled souvlaki skewers, mint-flecked ouzo mojitos and soft-serve ice cream capped in tahini magic shell. Even the name was cribbed from a Greek hero of a different sort: John “Bluto” Blutarsky, the merry prankster from the Oregon-filmed frat comedy “Animal House.” You could almost hear the shouts of “Opa!”

Turns out, Bluto’s is a little less gonzo, and a lot less Greek, than those early descriptions led us to believe. It is a skewer restaurant, and a good one at that, with spiced ground lamb, herb-stained chicken, shrimp and oregano-garlic Olympia Provisions sausages skewered and charred over the hearth’s crackling flames. But the focus of the team, including Executive Chef Barry Fitzpatrick, is on putting high quality food on plates, not smashing them at the end of the night.

The best thing here is the char-dappled flatbread. Not pita, per se — there’s no pocket, for one — but closer to a compact take on laffa, the high-hydration Iraqi bread that was an early inspiration. Gently grilled on the hearth, dusted with salt and oregano, it’s served in a slim paper sleeve, often still warm. You’re meant to rip off a nice chewy chunk and swipe it through the menu’s second-best item: a smooth, tahini-rich hummus topped with chickpeas and the Yemeni spice blend zhug or spoonfuls of spiced beef and golden raisins.

There’s a surprisingly deep bench of vegetable dishes, handy for vegetarians and anyone hoping to break up the meat and carb parade. But over a half-dozen visits, it’s been a little too easy to veer off track here. A recent chicory and delicata squash salad with pickled cherries was welcome, if inessential. Thick roast squash and beans, meanwhile, were an autumnal slog. Cocktails taste like an afterthought.

But there are other items worth your attention. The wedge salad is fun, with its bacon and house “ranchziki.” I might come back solo just to tackle the thin pork chop laid sizzling on a bed of fries. And the sticky-sweet, honey-slathered filo triangle stuffed with graviera, Greece’s second favorite cheese, could be a hit with your kids. And if it isn’t, there’s always soft serve.

As you can tell, food here often veers eastward from Greece. Five years ago, it might have even called itself an “Israeli-inspired” restaurant along the lines of Shalom Y’all or Tusk, calling to mind the lively dining scenes in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem while following the playbook of Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov or London’s Yotam Ottolenghi, whose cookbooks line Bluto’s back shelves. But the political climate has changed. As far as I know, no one in Portland is calling for a boycott of Greece.

What to order: As much souvlaki, flatbread and hummus as you can eat.

Details: Open for lunch and dinner daily a 2838 S.E. Belmont St., blutospdx.com

— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com

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