Harry's Coffee Shop is simple but sweet

There's a tiny new addition to dining options at Four Corners. With its bright blue roof and vibrant signs posted on its windows advertising the food inside, Harry's Coffee Shop is a welcome new neighbor to Blair. Located on University Boulevard diagonal from Blair and across from 7-11, the small shop joins the competition for Blair students' business.

After walking through the door, the first thing that strikes you about Harry's is its size. With only four tables and 14 chairs, seating is at a premium. Luckily, everything at Harry's can be easily taken to-go. A 60's style menu lists some of the items available, with more on the printed version, including 10 varieties of sandwiches and seven different types of subs. However, the selection isn't what sets Harry's apart from the other shops around the area.

The most striking thing about Harry's is the service. The shop is a family owned business, open from Monday to Saturday. The people who work at Harry's are friendly and polite to all who come there, and in less than a year they have already formed friendships with many regular customers. Even though Harry's isn't much of a sit-down restaurant, if you're eating at the store, the cook will bring out your food and deliver it to your table with a smile.

Harry's is a typical café, serving sandwiches, subs, and salads, but with a slight Greek flair that makes it different. The most obvious of these differences is the store's gyros ($4.50). These are a mixture of warm meat slices, fresh lettuce, tomato, onion and flavorful cucumber sauce rolled up into a fluffy and thick pita. It's like a Grecian taco, with all the intensity and flavor found in that Mexican food. The gyro is served hot and with a handful of chips. While the gyro exceeded expectations, it would have been better if served without the chips, which were dry and bland, and detracted from the excellent wrap.

The Greek salad is very tasty. The mixture of lettuce, tomato, feta cheese proves olives was very filling. One non-Greek twist to the salad was the addition of hot peppers. The salad is fresh with an appealing vinegary dressing on top of it. Lightly spiced, it covers the entire salad with a thin layer of flavor without being overwhelming and drowning out the taste of the vegetables. Tasty as the dish is, it does not justify the cost of $4.50 for a small and $5.75 for a large, making it the most expensive of all the menu items.

The best dish in the store, without a doubt, is another Greek specialty. This one, however, is a dessert. Harry's makes its own baklava, which is a traditional Greek pastry. It consists of many thin sheets of pastry with a layer of nuts in the center, and brushed on top with a sugar and honey mixture. This delicious treat is very sweet and chewy, similar to what a granola bar might be if you stacked up layers of pastry around it and added some sugar and honey. And at $1.25 a slice, it's definitely worth the price.

Harry's other sweet treats are far less impressive, however. The milkshakes, while easy to drink, are thin, and taste like melted ice cream instead of the expected cold treat. And the method used to make them takes away from the glamour; the cook just steps over to the refrigerators, grabs a bottle of milk, and mixes it with soft serve ice cream. You could make your own at home and save $1.55.

There are 10 different sandwiches offered at Harry's. Hopefully, the chicken sandwich is not an indication of the quality of the rest of the sandwich menu. The chicken patty looks as if it was just microwaved from a store brand package, and with Safeway so near perhaps it was. Slapped together with some lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise, any 8-year-old could make just as easily make this sandwhich, and with better results. Luckily the price ($2.50) is reasonable.

Harry's is a business that you just want to be successful. Unfortunately, there's lots of competition around, especially for the packaged drinks and snacks housed in refrigerators and shelves on Harry's wall. But with the excellent prices (with the exception of the Greek salad, everything is less than $5.00) and friendly service, Harry's may just have a chance in the busy world of Four Corners.

Harry's Coffee Shop is located at 25 University Blvd. in Silver Spring, in Four Corners