Skorpios: Damn Good Chicken

Aside from donating to charity or saving for your child's college fund, the best use of $6.75 is the quarter-chicken platter with fries and salad at Skorpios Maggio's Family Restaurant (affectionately known as Skorpios) in Vienna.  Hot rotisserie chicken, dusted with a lemon peppery spice blend, served to you on a divided plate with thick cut steak fries and a simple lettuce salad covered generously in feta and dressed with oil and vinegar, and a side of pita to mop up the juices that ooze out of the end of this delicious run-on sentence.  Rice pilaf and spinach rice are suitable side substitutes, if you're so inclined.

Skorpios would get lost among the stripmalls and chain fare that line the busy Maple Avenue strip through downtown Vienna if all they offered was run of the mill Greek fare.  What separates the restaurant from the pack is the passion and personality of owner Chris Maggio.  Chris can be found most weekdays working the register and making conversation with everyone who walks in.  Don't expect to order and go, which may prompt Chris to ask, "What?  You have a date?"  If you can't think of casual conversation, steal a glance at the TV showing Headline News and say "Scientists have shown that roasted chicken will make me love my wife more.  True?"  It's this kind of atmosphere, not to mention the mouth-watering food, that has allowed Skorpios to take over the vacant store next door, expanding its operation beyond the sky-blue bench and wall-length mirror of its predecessor. 

Walk in the door and you're immediately faced with decisions about the distant future, as the dessert case calls to you with cakes and cookies and piles of individually-wrapped baklava.  The menu is loaded with Greek favorites, such as souvlaki (pork tenderloin or chicken topped with feta), moussaka (beef and eggplant layered with bechamel), pastitsio (think baked ziti with layers of thick creamy bechamel sauce), and gyro (invoked during last year's gyro flame war).  Most of the menu, save the bechamel-laden items, can be ordered as salads, dinners, or pitas.  There's also a chicken gyro (pictured), which would appeal to those who like their meat carved from a spindle to be a little bit more tan.  If meat, questionable origin or otherwise, isn't for you, then try the vegetarian sub with sauteed onions and peppers, melted provolone and feta, and tzatziki sauce served on a crispy bun.  A single sub with a side order of fries is usually enough to feed 2 hungry folks.  About that baklava...who wouldn't want crispy filo dough layered with pistachios and drizzled with honey?  It's fantastic, but it's pretty hard to screw up baklava. 

Don't invoke Skorpios in the best hummus debate, though, as the texture was too chunky and the taste too flat.