Cincinnati’s Chili Cousin
Taste test panel puts classic Greek dish under its gyro-scope

By Doug Trapp

Most of us know that Cincinnati-style chili — a dish woven around the city’s image like spaghetti on a fork — is the product of Greek immigrants. So it logically follows that a city with its own Greek staple would have some great gyros, right? Right.

The gyro is a fairly simple sandwich. Take a flat pita, a shaved blend of beef and lamb (yes, a blend), tomatoes, onions and tzaziki sauce, and that’s more or less it. The sauce — perhaps the key ingredient — is a blend of cucumbers, garlic, salt, yogurt and sometimes sour cream for added thickness. There are as many variations of it, with extra spices and so on, as there are Greek moms, but no one omits any of these four basic ingredients.

Photo: Doug Trapp Gyro 101: beef/lamb slices, tomatoes, onions and tzaziki sauce in a flat pita.

I was the team captain for our taste test panel, although most of my annual gyro-eating happens over three days of the Panegyri Festival in Finneytown in late June.

But I think I represent many Cincinnatians that way.

Maria Rogers, CityBeat’s other news reporter, kind of grew up with Greek food. Her grandparents lived next to a Greek family in Middletown. She remembers the desserts mostly, including kataife — a shredded dough and walnut pastry and powdered sugar. It looks like large pieces of shredded wheat but tastes more like baklava, the best-known Greek dessert.

We still needed an expert to round out the team, so we enlisted Buzzy (real name: William) Gaz, general co-chair of the Panegyri Festival and owner of Uncle Woody’s bar on Calhoun Avenue across from UC. The third generation Greek immigrant said his sister nicknamed him after a character played by a Greek actor on the old Route 66 TV show.

Buzzy is our go-to guy for everything Greek, including spelling. It didn’t take long to realize we’d picked the right man. Upon entering our first of four restaurants — the recently-opened West Court Deli on Court Street downtown — Buzzy immediately identified the owner as one of two brothers who own hot dog carts around downtown.
Buzzy is a connected man. Of course, most local Greeks in the food business know each other.

Everyone who knows gyros knows about Sebastian’s, the cozy Glenway Avenue cornerstone. It was the standard by which we would judge the Deli, Chicago Gyro in Clifton Heights and Jordan Valley on Fourth Street. There are, of course, many more gyro takeout joints, but these were in the heart of Cincinnati — and four was our budgetary limit.

Gyro 101
Gyro in plain English means roughly what it does in Greek: “to rotate.” In the food sense, that’s a reference to the rotating blend of beef and lamb that cooks layer by layer as it’s sliced off. Two companies in Chicago and New York — Grecian Delight and Kronos, respectively — are the two, um, manufacturers most local Greek restaurant owners rely on, according to Buzzy. The meat also has spices such as garlic and oregano plus salt and pepper for that extra zing.

Most gyros differ only in the details. How juicy and spicy is the meat? How thick and sour creamy is the tzaziki sauce? How soft and flavorful is the pita?

Photo: Doug Trapp Buzzy Gaz is the ringer on CityBeat’s gyro taste test panel. As general co-chair of the annual Panegyri Festival and a third generation son of Greek immigrants, he knows a good gyro from a fake one.

Then there are the sides. How are the fries, or — if you’re the healthy sort — the Greek salad and dressing? And how fresh is everything?

After some personal deliberation, I decided we should stick to the basic gyro: flat pita, beef/lamb, tomatoes, onions and tzaziki. Some use pita pockets to create other versions of the sandwich, but that was heading toward falafel territory. I didn’t want to deal with judgment calls, so it was a flat pita or nothing.

For years Buzzy has aspired to open his own gyro joint. He might finally get around to it someday, if only in his home. During our visits, Maria and I learned his kitchen has a 4-foot commercial oven, four 1-foot burners, a 2-by-2 griddle and a same-sized broiler. He’s a serious food man.

Buzzy also had an simple, yet eloquent analogy for gyros.

“ This is a Greek hamburger,” he said. “I don’t know any other way to put it.”
We quickly established a rhythm: Meet for a gyro lunch. Evaluate the food while spending most of our time making small talk about crazy politicians, crazy Clifton bar patrons, Maria’s crazy relatives and Greek cuisine in general. Pick tomorrow’s time and place. Repeat.

The good times ended just as we were getting used to them.

West Court Deli: New gyro on the block
There were no seats at the West Court Deli, so we brought our lunches a couple of blocks back to CityBeat world headquarters. I ordered the chicken gyro, thinking we’d cover a lot of gyro ground. Maria and Buzzy opted for gyro plates — a pita cut into four wedges and topped with the other ingredients.

A West Court gyro and fries was $5; all the other restaurants were between $5 and $6 for the same. Neither was décor a major issue. Formica booths were the standard.
I quickly wished I’d stuck with the quintessential beef and lamb blend. The chicken was dry, but that was because it wasn’t cooked and sliced the way the beef/lamb is, Buzzy informed me.

Buzzy gave the West Court Deli some credit for their well-blended tzaziki sauce and extra credit for their Greek salad dressing, which he says is homemade because they use an olive oil and corn oil mix instead of olive oil and lemon juice. Maria, who ordered the salad, also liked the dressing.

Greek restaurants usually have one homemade ace up their sleeve. Sometimes it’s a dessert, although Buzzy said most local Greek restaurateurs buy them from the Piece of Cake Pastry Shop on Glenway Avenue, run by a Greek pastry chef. The Deli lost points for soggy fries but gained a lot of them back for their warm, cinnamon-laced pitas.

To be fair, I made a second visit alone for a gyro. The meat was plentiful and tasty, the pitas flavorful but the fries were still soggy. This counted in such a close competition.
Altogether, we concluded, the Deli wasn’t bad for a new joint.
28 W. Court St., Downtown. 513-651-2600

Chicago Gyro: New management, same food
For more than 30 years, UC students have relied on Chicago Gyro on McMillan to help prevent a hangover. But the restaurant also attracts a diverse, if moderate, lunch crowd.
A couple of years ago, its longtime owner Bill Sakkas sold it to three investors because of poor family health, Buzzy said. It’s now owned by one of the investors, but the gyros haven’t suffered a bit, he said.

Gyros are naturally hard to handle without making a mess, but I thought the pita was overwhelmed and that their vegetables could have been a little less chunky and more plentiful. Buzzy perceptively noticed the pita was smaller — seven inches instead of the nine at West Court.

Photo: Buzzy Gaz Maria Rogers and Doug Trapp take a break from their day jobs skewering local politicians to rate four local gyro restaurants.

Our judgments were subtle. Neither the Deli nor Chicago Gyro had bad gyros, but Buzzy was a somewhat bigger fan of Chicago’s tzaziki sauce. Maria, like me, was on the fence concerning the sauce, although she liked her salad and dressing just fine, but not as much as the Deli’s.

The fries were definitely better, which was enough to push Chicago into a slight overall lead.
200 W. McMillan, Clifton Hgts. 513-621-3828.

Jordan Valley: The pita’s edge
An unexpected pita disqualification of Andy’s Mediterranean Grille in Walnut Hills led us to Jordan Valley Restaurant on Fourth Street downtown. The place was quiet and a bit dark, but we had the owner’s full attention. We were the majority of the lunch crowd so far that day.

A brief but noticeable wait ended with us tearing into the most daring gyro so far. Instead of a soft pita, Jordan uses a cold, thin, unleavened pita wrapped tightly around the meat, onions, tomatoes and sauce. Being a closet neatnik, I liked their gyro’s portability — it was like handling a burrito. The fries were fine, like Chicago Gyro’s.
Buzzy didn’t have a lot to say one way or the other, except to notice the pickles in Maria’s salad. She didn’t care for the salad because it had banana peppers, pickles and more of a vinegrette rather than Greek salad dressing, and the mix of those flavors along with the feta was too overwhelming.

Jordan’s menu, like many gyro-serving joints, wasn’t large. But it was hard to compare their total package to the two solid offerings we’d already had. Messy or not, there was something lacking here — zest in the meat, perhaps? Also, this was the only gyro that gave me any hint of indigestion.
211 W. Fourth St., Downtown. 513-929-9299

Sebastian’s: King of the (Price) Hill
Success breeds success. That’s how Sebastian’s finished at the top of our list, although there was some last-minute dissent.

The small, quirky corner restaurant goes one step further than the others. Sure, it has the Formica booths and tables that seem to inhabit every gyro joint, but dozens of baseball hats hang where the wall meets the ceiling: Continental Airlines, the Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati Bible College hung close to our table.

The owner recognized Buzzy and gave us the red carpet treatment. Moments after sitting down, he brought over a plate of olives, feta cheese and other Greek snacks. Buzzy reassured me he hadn’t warned the owner.

Maria, a child of the northern suburbs, had difficulty navigating the West side. Things were looking very desperate after my attempt to guide her east back toward the restaurant ended as my cell phone battery died. Buzzy and I looked at each other, unsure what to do. Luckily, I recalled her number from memory, had Buzzy dial it from his cell phone and had an employee guide Maria in. Buzzy stood outside as a landmark.

Once Maria arrived, we needed little time to come to a conclusion. Sebastian’s seasoned fries, juicy, spicy meat and tzaziki sauce on the side pushed aside the competition.

Maria and I agreed it was the best. It’s hard to beat how warm and fresh the whole sandwich was. That probably had a lot to do with their established lunch crowd, which kept them cranking out gyros.

The consensus fell apart a few days later. Buzzy suffered some indigestion and thought Sebastian’s had changed their sauce a bit. He changed his vote to Chicago Gyro, but Maria and I stood firm, not having suffered any problems.

Chicago and the West Court Deli were close, and I’m still more likely to walk for lunch to Jordan Valley than drive to the West side. But all things being equal, Sebastian’s offered the best overall experience, even after discounting the special treatment.
5209 Glenway Ave., Price Hill. 513-471-2100