With seven locations spread over California (Southern and Northern) and Texas, Greek Street Gyros and Bowls make it their business to deliver quality Greek food to your front door. They tend to operate out of ghost kitchens, rather than a big, fancy storefront, because it’s all about the quality of the food.
“Greek Street Gyros & Bowls brings the craveable flavors and french-fry-loaded bites from the streets of Greece directly to your front door,” they say online. “We serve crispy, fry-loaded gyros and bowls available exclusively for delivery, pick-up, and catering in Southern California, Northern California, and Texas. Choose between crispy chicken, classic gyro meat, free-range chicken breast, USDA Prime beef, or charred and roasted white sweet potato for your Gyro or Bowl. Add some of our locally sourced and rotating vegetables or house-made sauces and dips for a meal that will take you back to your Aegean vacation.”
The menu is a joy, even if you only spend time reading it. Everything looks incredibly tempting, including the gyro sandwiches, made with a choice of free-range chicken breast, crispy chicken breast, angus beef or roasted sweet potato.
Then there are the bowls, which “come on mixed greens, brown basmati rice pilaf, or half greens and half grains, with cherry tomato, cucumber, pickled red onion, radish, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, and pita chips, with your choice of house-made dip and sauce.” Again, there is a choice of chicken, beef or sweet potato.
But we opted for the Souvlaki Chicken Salad, which came on a bed of greens and then our choices of spicy eggplant dip, sesame kale slaw, pickled onions, roasted mushrooms, feta cheese and spicy garlic yogurt.
As salads go, this one is quite magnificent. Even the leaves, which could be sloppy and wilty under warm meat in lesser hands, are bouncy, crisp and fresh here. Vibrant and full of lively flavor too. The greens are enhanced by the sesame kale slaw, which brings the salad to life with as much vigor as it does the kale within.
The roasted mushrooms add a warm and earthy texture, and a rich, nutty flavor. The pickled red onions are tart and tangy, and that lifts the dish to a whole new level. Then there’s the creamy, insistent feta cheese.
The finishing flourishes come via the spicy eggplant and the spicy garlic yogurt. Both tie everything together while adding some much needed zip. If only all salads were this good.
Greek Street Gyros & Bowls is located at 5660 Selmaraine Dr., Culver City 90230. Call 424-281-9004 or visit greekstreetgyrosbowls.com.