Restaurant review, Ovelia Psistaria's Fear of Frying.

Ovelia Psistaria doesn't look like other Greek restaurants in Astoria: Missing are the iced displays of fish, barnyard animals rotating on spits, 3-D pictures of the Parthenon, and rustic taverna décor that have long characterized the neighborhood's Hellenic eateries. Instead, there's a long bar that twinkles like a starry sky with light-emitting diodes, slinging a menu of sweet, colorful cocktails that owe nothing to metaxa or ouzo. Lit by fixtures resembling ghosts dangling from the ceiling, the dining room ascends to an elevated rear platform flanked by smeary paintings of half-ruined boats. While the diverse décor doesn't quite hang together, neighborhood patrons seem to relish eating in a relentlessly modern-looking place.

The bill of fare remains resolutely Greek, though, with a handful of interpolations from other Astorian ethnicities, and a few modern fripperies. The "psistaria" in the name refers not to a walk-in clinic where cysts are speedily lanced, but to a restaurant that specializes in grilling. This activity dovetails nicely with the modern distaste for fried foods, and thus do the galeos ($15) arrive prison-striped from the grill, rather than thickly breaded and fried as they are elsewhere. Also known as sand sharks, these ambassadors from the Gulf of Maine are the only sharks that breathe air, and also use their gills. Even more strangely, each female has twin uteri, in which a pair of youngsters gestates for as long as a year.

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