The Gyros of Illinois

The first gyro I ever had was in my freshman year of college, at SIU in Carbondale, IL, in the cafeteria of all places. I’ve talked about my small-town upbringing and my food fussiness when I was younger enough times, so I’ll spare you the recap. But my dorm-mates were much more excited than I was to see a tray full of limp pale flatbreads, each with a thin pair of greyish meat rectangles arranged on it.

You know what I mean if you’ve ever picked up one of those “Gyros kits” you might see in the freezer section of your grocery store of choice.

It’s good to know I can recreate that half-assed first gyro experience any time I want

“They’re great, try one!” they encouraged me. Well, I didn’t much like the look of that white sauce they were ladling on, and I was not a fan of onions or tomatoes at the time, but the bread and meat looked harmless enough. I gave it a shot.

I loved it.

It was a few years later, when a Greek restaurant finally opened up in Quincy in the early ’90s, before I tried another one. I have friends who have worked in and managed college cafeterias and I know it’s a tough job, but the difference between gyros being prepared one-at-a-time by a guy in a kitchen he owns and those being mass-reheated by the trayful was plain immediately, not to mention the unmistakeable improvement that actually adding onions, tomatoes, and tzatziki sauce brings.

Tell 15-year-old me that one day he’d love garlic-and-cucumber flavored yogurt and he’d laugh in your face

I never got a photo of that first gyro or the second, much better one. Or many of those between then and now. I also never got a photo of the best gyro I ever had, from the stand outside the Parthenon in Chicago’s Greektown during 2008’s Taste of Greece.

I did get a (terrible) photo of the fest though.

The Parthenon makes their own gyros meat, and it’s less finely-ground and tightly-bound than the typical manufactured cone. Something about it that night, the festival atmosphere, the outdoor setting, sharing it with my beautiful wife as we dodged drunks walking down the middle of Halsted street–something made that gyro better than any I had before or since. We’ve been back to the Parthenon and tried it again–on their regular menu, gyros are served as a pile of spit-roasted meat on a plate with parsleyed onions and a side of tzatziki. Pita bread and tomatoes have to be requested, and somehow the meat doesn’t seem quite as tasty as it did that one perfect night, though the restaurant is very nice.

It’s not surprising that they’d have such good gyros there. The Parthenon claims to have popularized gyros in the US (as well as inventing the concept of frying cheese then lighting it on fire).

Chicago itself has been called “the gyros capital of the world.” The world’s largest manufacturer of Gyros cones, Kronos, is headquartered in Chicagoland, as well as several of their largest competitors. Chicago may be known for hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches, but the typical Vienna-Beef-yellow Chicago fast food stand will also feature a Kronos cone (or Olympia, or Corfu, etc.) spinning on a vertical spit. Greek-owned restaurants festoon the city, especially the Southwest side, where a number of barely-related joints called Nicky’s (or sometimes Mickey’s) serve Big Baby double cheeseburger, gyros, and sometimes a combination of the two.

I’ve never quite been drunk enough at a Nicky’s to order the gyros Big Baby; however, I did recently have a gyro at the Nicky’s in Crestwood near me. It was tasty and huge, though not photogenic, and I had to put half of it in the fridge, trusting the teenagers to scavenge it for me (I was not disappointed).

Nicky’s Drive-In at 115th and Western was another of the far-flung Nicky’s sort-of-chain-but-not-really, now sadly defunct, as they also served what they called a “Village-style” gyro, with meat cut off the cone in slightly thicker strips and then briefly griddled with additional spices and herbs. Another now-closed favorite, CND Gyros, was a gritty side-street tavern in ritzy Streeterville that served an infamous “gyros melt,” a grilled cheese sandwich with sauteed onions and a layer of gyros meat.

More sandwiches lost to time, though their memories live on in LTH writeups and Yelp reviews. But even a corner sub shop in Chicagoland will often get into the gyros game. Picking my sons up from the airport recently, and learning that they were hungry after their 4 hour flight (of course they were! good parenting, Jim), I succumbed to my curiosity about the big red roof of Uncle Sam’s Submarines on 87th and Cicero in Burbank.

The boys were at levels of happy-to-see-dad varying from “tolerating dad for food” to “hey dad! dad! hey dad over here! look!” and ordered a gyros plate (twice the meat, twice the fries, twice the pitas, one liiiiiiiiitle tub of tzatziki. No, you can’t have mine), a roast beef sub, and a hot dog with ketchup and barbecue sauce. (“Are you serious?” the girl behind the counter asked. Hey, he’s 9.)

I got the gyro, and it was fine. Kronos cone, good tzatziki, the typical giant unwieldy pile of meat that disintegrates the pita before you’ve finished, the 2 slices of tomato and scattering of onions. Thin McDonald’s-style fries.

Gyros from Uncle Sam’s Submarines

The photos, and the sandwiches, all kind of run together in my mind. When you have a small group of local manufacturers that own most of the market even at the national level, you’re not going to run into much variability. Which is why I enjoy it so much when places do something different with them. Like the Gyros Big Baby, or the Gyros Melt. Or the Spicy Gyros offered by Max’s Take Out on East Adams street downtown. It’s a hole-in-the-wall, fast-service place, and the “spicy” gyros contains the additions of chopped cilantro and a salsa-type sauce with a pretty good kick.

It was also the least overstuffed of the gyros I’ve had recently.

I got the sauce on the side. It’s definitely worth trying–I liked it on the fries as well.

It did *not* last long. Good stuff.

I hope someday to find another gyro as perfect as the one I had 8 years ago. Maybe some intrepid food blogger will rave about a new place and it will be worth the hype. Maybe I’ll be the guy stumbling across an unknown place that’s doing great work before the word’s gotten out. Maybe one of these days I’ll finally build myself that vertical spit I’ve been thinking about for years and start cranking out shawarma, al pastor, and gyros the way I like them.

Or maybe I’ll grab my wife and head back to the Halsted festival, now called Taste of Greektown. It’s happening again in a month.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great