Restaurant Week Diaries: Arcadia Diner 

1696 Williston Road, South Burlington 802-651-9080

If this post sounds a little logy, it's because I am. I'm not someone who can have a three-course lunch without a nap, but here I am at the office after my orgiastic meal at Arcadia Diner in South Burlington.

The Greek diner offers a $10 lunch special of Greek chicken pita or spanakopita platter or a $15 turkey dinner. With the weather's return to chilly dampness, it seemed like a comforting soup was the way to start off both meals, rather than chowing down on a Greek salad.

I was disappointed that there was no avgolemono available today, but my chicken noodle soup (right) was hot, salty and exactly what the doctor ordered (yep, I have a cold). The noodles retained just enough bite and the vegetables did not — they melted in transit from spoon to gullet.

My boyfriend's corn chowder was thick and filled with chunks of corn and thick rashers of bacon.

My main course was the grilled chicken pita (below, right). The flatbread was filled with fresh lettuce, tomato and chunks of moist feta, which, together, turned into a kind of Greek salad in a wrap.  I love lemony, herbaceous Greek salads, so this was awesome, but the juicy morsels of marinated chicken made it even more pleasurable. My one complaint was that the chicken was skin-on. In the wrap, the skin became mushy, but it was no problem to pick it off.

The already large wrap came with a pickle spear and far more crisp-outside, mashed potato-y soft-inside fries than I could ever hope to eat.

The turkey dinner was an even larger meal. Although our heavily eye-shadowed server, who alternately called us "hon," "honey," "love" and "dear" with each address, asked for my boyfriend's potato preference, none made it onto the plate. Still, he was hurting by the end of the meal.

When they said "turkey dinner," (right) they meant it. There was layer upon layer of freshly roasted turkey, along with a hefty portion of strongly sage-flavored stuffing. There was a big bowl of mayonnaisey coleslaw, too, not to mention the whole-berry cranberry sauce. Basically, this was Thanksgiving.

Despite the gorging we'd already done, I was too excited about dessert to remember to photograph it. Though the menu said we could choose baklava or apple pie à la mode, it turned out any dessert on the menu was fair game.

I chose chocolate silk pie, which was smooth as advertised, though even more chocolaty than I anticipated, and topped with the biggest chocolate shavings I've ever seen. I elected not to have the included ice cream with mine. My boyfriend got a bowl of vanilla on the side with his thick, luscious slice of coconut cream pie.

Seemed like overkill to me, but then, I was the one having a three-course lunch on a work day. Was it worth it? You betcha.