Evanston shop serves up serious gyros

Friday, June 30, 2017

Chicagoland is littered with neighborhood gyro joints, and our Hungry Hound says most of them offer only beef or lamb from the vertical spit.

EVANSTON, Ill. (WLS) -- Chicagoland is littered with neighborhood gyro joints, but most of them offer only beef or lamb from the vertical spit.

Even fewer use pork, which is a common sight in Greece. But he's found a new concept in Evanston, where they take their gyros pretty seriously.

Most gyro joints buy frozen cones from Kronos or Grecian Delight, then dress it up with their own tzatziki sauce - usually sour cream and cucumbers. But a revolution of sorts is taking place in Evanston, near Northwestern's campus where a couple of guys have decided to offer three different options each day, including Greece's most typical offering from a vertical spit: pork.

The vertical towers of meat spin pretty much all day inside the kitchen at Yeero Revolution in Evanston, the first of what could one day become several stores of its kind.

"We specialize in the food of Greece, so actually it's Greek street food. And these are things you would find on all corners of the beautiful country of Greece," said John Nikolaou, one of the store's co-owners.

The beef-lamb combo is expected, but there's also chicken, cooked until crisp, as well as pork, the most common offering in Greece. Not only are the spits imported from the same East Coast company that supplies much of Greece with its gyros, so are the pitas. When orders come in, those pitas are first toasted up on the griddle, then shmeared with homemade Greek yogurt, red onions and fresh tomatoes. Proteins go on next, and if you like, a mound of french fries, which are first blanched, then fried to-order to get them crispy. Incidentally, you could also get them on the side with some feta cheese and oregano.

There's a lot more than just gyros though. Kebabs are homemade - the pork souvlaki is traditional - but also chicken. They also make a dynamite moussaka, loaded with ground beef and creamy béchamel.

There's also a few freshly-made salads; and check out one of the homemade dips, like hummus, yogurt-avocado-garlic and tzatziki, which is made with Greek yogurt, rather than the usual sour cream. Desserts are also all made in-house.

"We make our own baklava, it's double stuffed, and we make it a little different so people come from all over, not just for the gyro but our baklava is pretty popular as well," he said.

In Steve Dolinsky's "Extra Course," he'll tell you about some of the other desserts available at the restaurant.