Another chapter in foraging for food by restaurant delivery. I had a desire for some gyros, an old favorite in the wide world of demotic cuisines, in this case Greek: from Merriam-Webster online (considerably amended):
noun gyro (plural gyros): /jíro/ [North American] a sandwich especially of lamb and beef [roasted on a spit and sliced], tomato, onion, and yogurt sauce [tzatziki] on pita bread [AZ: the name comes originally from Greek, but has been thoroughly Anglicized, so that the phonology and morphology of the Greek name are no longer relevant to the American name]
Photos of two presentations of a gyro:
(#1) Taco-style gyros (open-faced pita sandwiches, folded up for eating)
(#2) Empanada-style gyros, stuffed in pita pockets
A gyro is hand food, but my disabled hands now can barely manage them. So I was hoping that the current fashion for bowls (inspired by (Hawaiian) poke bowls) would have led some Greek fast-casual restaurant to offer gyros in bowl form, where I could use a fork. And so DoorDash and GrubHub both led me to Nick the Greek at 322 University Ave. in Palo Alto (which opened on 5/15 of this year), a genuine source of gyro bowls.
(#3) The Palo Alto Nick the Greek just before opening (I hope to post soon on Curry Pizza House, source of still more ethnic demotic food)
An initial test a while back was generally good, but way too dry (not enough tzatziki). Then yesterday I went back to the site, to discover that the restaurant lets you jiggle pretty much everything, including omitting ingredients and adding extra measures of ingredients.
The 11/19 Nick the Greek order. The standard Nick’s bowl:
choice of any meat or falafel, basmati rice, romaine lettuce, onions, tomatoes, English cucumbers, feta and red wine vinaigrette topped with tzatziki and spicy yogurt
Arnold’s 11/19 gyro bowl:
beef / lamb gyro – no lettuce (I would have gone for chopped flat parsley if it had been available, but the romaine was way too much) – extra cucumbers – extra feta – extra tzatziki (the trial order was too dry)
with a box of pita triangles (I am fond of the taste and texture of pita bread) that I could spread hummus (a household staple) on with a knife.
A great success. And since delivery orders are meant for (at least) two people, I have dinner for tonight as well.
Nick the Greek the company. Nick the Greek is a chain of fast-casual restaurants founded in 2014 in northern California by three Greek cousins named Nick. Who took advantage of the celebrity of Nick Dandolos; from Wikipedia:
Nikolaos Andreas Dandolos (April 27, 1883 – December 25, 1966), commonly known as Nick the Greek, was a Greek professional gambler and high roller.
Bonus: Nick the Greek is a nice half-rhyme: /ɪ … i/.
The chain has been growing explosively; at the moment, there are 98 restaurants, most in CA, 8 elsewhere (NV AZ UT TX KS (Olathe) MO (State Line) — as far east as they go).
Ordering from chain restaurants. Ordering food for delivery is not going to get you exquisite food (except possibly for dishes that improve through long periods of resting and also travel well), but sturdy good-tasting food isn’t hard to come by. Some from stand-alone restaurants, but many from chains. Lots of the chains are awful (think of Subway’s ghastly-sweet sandwich bread), but a fair number — especially highly specialized chains — turn out reliably good food.
So I’m always happy to discover new such places, like Nick the Greek. Or the Koi Palace chain of Chinese dim sum restaurants I posted about yesterday. Or the Vons Chicken chain of Korean fried chicken restaurants (also offering other Korean items, like japchae) that I’ve posted about every so often, the closest of which will supply my dinners for Thanksgiving Day and the day after: soy sauce and black vinegar chicken on a bed of japchae. Replacing my traditional Thanksgiving pozole. This is a DEI household: diverse, exotic, and international. Oh, and the other thing too.
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