Palm Springs, California is known as an affluent community, with restaurants to suit and one of the best, said Palm Springs Life, is Koutouki, owned by chef Chris St. Denis, and is “as authentic as it gets.”

He learned about Greek food from his Greek father-in-law, a longtime chef and restaurateur, when he was 17 and cooked in Greek restaurants for the last two decades, taking the wisdom and experience with him.

At Koutouki, the menu specializes in traditional Greek dishes and lots of seafood, like both a hot and cold octopus and whole grilled branzino as well as homemade hummus and tzatziki, spanakopita, and rich beef and veggie moussaka. Lamb dishes, the most popular, aren’t common in Greece as daily fare, he said, explaining that, “North Americans always assume that Greeks eat a lot of lamb, but that’s actually false. It’s very expensive in Greece, so typically they only eat it at Christmas and Easter.”

People in Palm Springs flock to a lamb shoulder cooked for eight hours until it’s fall-off-the-bone tender, and the grilled lamb chops. “They’re easily our biggest sellers, by far,” he said.