Restaurant Review:

The amount of adaptation in this economy by restaurant owners has been startling and really shows no signs of letting up any time soon.

In order to survive, places have had to lower prices and alter menus in an attempt to get people in the door.

Happy hours are a great find now, but another area where there are deals is lunch places.

The chains are not immune from cost-cutting, and one place that has done some tinkering with its menu is Daphne’s Greek Café.

The Mediterranean-themed restaurant has always been a pretty inexpensive place to eat, but the restaurant has really worked on getting people in the door.

One of the ways they are doing this is with a mini dollar menu. They have four items available for a buck — hummus and grilled pita, roasted red pepper hummus and grilled pita, fire feta and grilled pita and baklava. They also will allow diners to add a soup to any entrée for a dollar.

The hummus plates are not a bad size for the price. Of the three, I enjoyed the roasted red pepper hummus. The dish provides a little more flavor than the regular hummus, but doesn’t have any serious amounts of spice as the name might suggest.

If you want some spice in your hummus, go for the fire feta. Cube-size pieces of the Greek cheese are mixed with spicy chili powder.

One pita is grilled and sliced into fours to accompany the hummus. I would like to see a little more grilling, maybe basting the bread with melted butter before putting it on the grill. By just putting in on the grill with little to no oil or butter, it comes out with no marks on it and is more like warmed-up pita rather than grilled.

Until 3 p.m., there are six lunch combinations with different options. The first has a choice of gyro pita, grilled chicken pita, spicy grilled chicken pita and a crispy shrimp pita.

A smaller choice is the new street pitas lunch. There are two gyros or grilled chickens or falafels, and you can mix and match for $6.99. I had a gyro and a grilled chicken. The two pitas are a bit smaller than the ones you get with the lunch combo, but I liked that I could try two different items.

The plate comes with a salad and rice pilaf. The salad has red onions, feta, cucumber and iceberg lettuce with an oil-and-vinegar type dressing.

The gyro had strips of the flavored meat with cucumber, feta and tomato. The sandwich was a touch dry, but the tzatziki sauce helped, though the sauce seems more sour cream-based than the yogurt I am used to.

The grilled chicken was seasoned and grilled and again a bit dry, but the sauce and the cucumber, feta and tomato improved it.

One of the combos I would recommend is the quarter chicken. It has a nice seasoning on it and is plenty of food for the $7.79 price tag.

If you are hungrier, the plates provide more food. There is a half chicken as one of the selections and a two-grilled kabob entrée, instead of one. If a late lunch is a possibility, the restaurant is offering for a limited time a three-item dinner that is less than $7.

The meal is always brought to the table, and the staff treats you like you are eating somewhere other than what could be classified as a fast food place. For the price, the food is perfect and there aren’t a lot of places where you can sit down and have lunch for less than $10. It’s a place worth checking out.

Daphne’s Greek Café

Address: 7801 Edinger Ave., Huntington Beach

Phone: (714) 903-2317

Website: www.daphnesgreekcafe.com

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Specialty dish: Gyros plate

Alcohol served: No

Entrée price range: $5.59 to $9.19

Family friendly: Yes, three-item children’s menu

Credit cards accepted: American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa

Rating: ***

JOHN REGER reviews local restaurants and may be contacted at [email protected] or P.O. Box 2984, Seal Beach, CA 90740.