Ever since I moved down to Florida I’ve been craving a well made gyro.  You would think it wouldn’t be too hard to find some shaved lamb on a spit in fresh pita with vegetables and tzatziki. Detroit seemed to be the land of plenty when it came to Greek food.  I mean you can’t drive 2 blocks without seeing a Coney or Greek diner. So anyways, I was really jonesing for a Gyro and hopped on google and searched for Gyro and 33603.  Gyro Land appeared to be the closest place, and you would think with a new like Gyro Land that they’d have Gyros.  I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of the restaurant, but the place was pretty run down.  The chairs looked older than Clint Eastwood, and he’s practically Skeletor.

So anyways, the place was beaten up.  Walked in and it seemed a little sketchy, but a man’s gotta get his gyro, nom’ sayin?  Ordered up 2 gyro’s with fries and some jumbo scrimp, because who doesn’t want some delicious scrimp? Sat down to wait for our food, some hobo wanders in muttering about timecube or some such.  Did the needful and ignored him.  Brought the food home and was thoroughly underwhelmed.  It was some thick cut lamb, which was hopeful.  It was a really well put together wrap but not quite a classic gyro.  Tzatziki was kinda thick but otherwise decent.  Most of the food was kinda chilly, but I think we can blame that on the drive back.  Fries were fries.  Same deal you get everywhere else.  Lightly seasoned with some spice combination.  The odd thing is that the scrimp was the standout in the whole affair.  I’ve had some bad shrimp before, I mean.. I’ve been to a Red Lobster.  The Gyro Land batter wasn’t too heavy and the shrimps were still nice and firm.  Worth coming back for the shrimp, still not the gyro I’m looking for.

I give it 2.5 Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.  Decor was nothing to write home about and the gyro was only okay. Not cheap, but not expensive either.  If you’re hungry and want something quickly give Gyro Land a shot.

(Matt the Editor’s Note)PS~ To eat here you might get hit up by Bubbs for some smokes. Buyer beware on that one.

Mykonos is located in a tourist area of Tarpon Springs.  This particular spot is populated by Greek people, and the primary trade (other than trinkets and ‘Florida’-baubles) is sea sponges.  So despite it being fairly chilly for Florida in December, you could see tourists wandering around that evening in shorts and wearing no shirts (I happened to be wearing a hoodie). This particular section of Tarpon Springs has a particular flavor or character to itself that most of the Tampa area lacks.  I doubt I can accurately ascribe the character that belongs to the town, but there is a grit and a feeling of history for the place.  For those of you who haven’t visited Tampa, a large portion of the surrounding development is either new, and fairly unremarkable architecture.  Either that, or it’s filled with car dealerships, boat dealerships, and titty bars.  When driving Sia down to Tampa for the first time, I made the mistake of taking the “scenic” route and getting off of I-75 South and rerouting to US 19 somewhere around Odessa or New Port Richey.  So her first fill of the area was driving past an alternating strip of Walmarts, Car Dealerships, Boat Dealerships, assorted Fast Food joints, and a slew of greasy Strip Clubs.  In retrospect, that was a fair sampling of the Tampa area (admittedly there is more to Tampa than just that).  Enough of my diatribe on the ‘city planning’ of the greater Tampa Bay area and on to Mykonos.

When we first arrived to Mykonos, it was quite busy. The dining area appeared fairly small and very busy.  We had to wait for 10 or 15 minutes to get a table. While waiting to be seated I noticed that a number of the servers and cooks actually spoke Greek (as well as being staffed with folks from south of the Border as any great restaurant is).  The music coming out over the boombox was also Greek, and the head chef was Greek.  This all seemed indicative of having a fairly “authentic” and totally righteous meal.

Everyone showed up with a hearty appetite.  Before we ordered we were served freshly baked bread.  It was fairly standard ‘before the meal’-bread, but from what I understand Mykonos has it’s own in-house bakery. For an appetizer we ordered Saganaki (Opa!) which was salty, buttery and delicious. We also ordered Keftedes which is a pan-fried potato pastry.  The Keftedes were crispy on the outside yet very moist and creamy inside; they were very rich. The salads that came with virtually every meal were composed of very fresh vegetables and a chunk of feta.  The Chicken Lemon Soup had a very strong lemon flavor.  The chicken was shredded and was great.   Between the salad and the soup you could have stopped and had a nice meal from that alone.

To attempt to describe the meal that night would be to do it an injustice.  To put it simply, the food was like an exquisite Greek orgy of flavors in my mouth. As is typical with my family, we all shared what we ordered so I got to taste everything on the table.  I ordered the Mousaka, Dan got the Fila Dolmades (essentially Grape Leaves topped with an egg-lemon sauce), Sia ordered the Garides Mykonos which was a shrimp dish sautéed with fresh tomatoes, onions, herbs and feta cheese served on a bed of rice, my Mom ordered the Garides Ellinikes which is shrimp sautéed in garlic, oregano and Greek spices, and finally my Dad ordered the Lamp Chops which was served with another plate heaped with rice.  We were also given a plate of freshly sautéed pees (which were very good).  The portions were tremendous.

To top the evening off we ordered Baklava and Rice Pudding.  The Rice Pudding was fairly thick and the Baklava was Baklava.  We were also served a plate with a freshly cut apple topped with cinnamon which happened to trump the Baklava and Rice Pudding.

As you can see we had a considerable amount of leftovers to bring home (and later demolish).  We had an amazing evening at Mykonos and I would highly recommend it to anyone passing by Tarpon Springs.  Hell, it’s worth the effort to make the trip to Mykonos if you’re in the Tampa area.

Definitely a well deserved Rating: 5 out of 5 stars .

Belated in Tampa,
-Matt

2900 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
(734) 332-9700

It has been a while since I’ve written anything for the site.  I’ve been working on the theme and some backend stuff for the website.  This is a bit of a throw back (aka I should have written this thing months ago), which is a nice reminder of summer.  I ended up running errands with my father in Ann Arbor and we were going to stop by the University of Michigan admissions while we were there.  My Dad asked me to find somewhere to eat while he opened a bank account or something for his business.  Anyways, I ended up wandering around looking for places to eat nearby.  I was a little leery of this place because I thought the prices might be too high.  My options were Cottage Inn or Mediterrano, and there is no way I was going to chowzer down on some pizza before meeting with admissions.

I decided to order some coffee while waiting for my Dad.  I opted for dining outside.  Nothing beats eating outdoors on a beautiful day.

The coffee was pretty decent, I’m not really sure what the stuff on the plate was.  I think it was some spread for the bread, ya know… olive oil poured over it then smash it all over your bread.  I was starting to get a little antsy, 10 minutes turned into 20 or 25 minutes, while waiting so I gave my Dad a ring and decided to order for the both of us.  I went for the Greek Style Baked Summer Vegetables; It had Semolina orza pasta, tomatoes, feta cheese and Kalamata olives on top.  I ordered the Grilled Chicken Kebabs for my Dad.  The Summer Vegetables were absolutely fantastic.  They were perfectly baked, and the melted feta added a nice little punch.  It was full of textures, the soft artichokes, the green beans still had some snap.  The tomatoes didn’t seem to be overly acidic nor over seasoned.  The chicken kebabs looked pretty delicious too.

While eating I spoke with my Father about how I feel that good Vegetarian dishes are the hallmark of good restaurants.  Even when I’m not eating purely vegetarian, I like the option for a vegetarian dish just to try new things that I wouldn’t cook for myself.  I can make a damn fine steak or an amazing hamburger, however making something like these tomato baked vegetables?  It just wouldn’t cross my mind to put those things together since I grew up with meat as the protein for most of our meals.

While you do pay for the dishes your wallet won’t be too much lighter;  my Greek Veggies cost $11 and the Chicken Kebab was $12.99.  Not terribly expensive considering how much food you get and a great atmosphere for a dining experience.  Most of the dishes were between the $10-$20 range, with the majority around $15.  If you’re looking for a casual dining spot, with some great Mediterranean inspired foods, give Mediterrano a shot.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars  Decor and atmosphere were great and really fit the mood of the food.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Price of everything was reasonable.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Food was perfectly cooked and all of the flavors really went well together.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars Overall.  Definitely deserving of 4.5 stars, if you’re in Ann Arbor give it a shot.

The next day we went to the UofM football game.  It was one they actually won too!

1731 W Grand River Ave
Okemos, MI 48864-1803
(517) 347-9066

“Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years, rockin’ my peers and puttin’ suckas in fear, makin the tears rain down like a MON-soon, listen to the bass go BOOM”

That’s right I’m back from my sabbatical.  “What pray tell were you doing?” one might ask.  “None of your goddamn business!!!11!!!!!1!11!” one might reply.  But seriously, I was saving children from burning buildings and curing diseases that plague small, cute animals (read substitute teaching and eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches).  When I finished with this exhausting but rewarding work I found myself to be famished, so I called some friends and we repaired to a relatively new local eatery: T&D’s Coney Grill.

As you can see this is very nice, or at least nicer, than your typical diner/”coney island”, this is probably because this is the former set of Villegas, the ill-fated Okemos bistro.  The interior is very pleasant, with subdued lighting and muted colors that don’t try to claw your eyes out with a visual spoon.  The bar, situated right by the front entrance, is fantastic, long, with great views of the kitchen and the waitress stations (dinner and a show), and makes me sad that I can’t plunk myself down and drink myself into oblivion.  Despite the obvious superiority of the bar over other seating, my party and I chose a booth/table combo, as there were three of us.

I arrived to the table late, as I was unsuccessfully trying to snap a picture of the exterior, and as I sat down the waitress approached with drinks for my fellow diners, she gave a not entirely pleasant snort of surprise and asked if I needed something to drink,  I should have seen this as the beginning of a not very pleasant pattern, but I blithely pushed on and ordered a water.  More on the waitress in a bit.

The menu at T&D’s is pretty typical for a coney-style restaurant.  And if you from around the east lansing area, you  might notice that it has a strikingly similar layout to the menu at Hannah’s Koney Island on Hagadorn.  This is because they are operated by the same owners.  In any case, the menu has the usual greek centered diner fare that one comes to expect and love from a coney island.  Gyros, sandwiches, coney dogs, saganaki, greek salads, etc…

The waitress came back and we began to order.  My female dining companion ordered, and then my male compatriot told her to skip him as he wasn’t quite ready, well neither was I, so I hemmed and hawed for a couple second during which the waitress grew visibly annoyed.  So I finally settled on a gyro supreme with a cup of their soup of the day: split pea with ham.

The soup arrived in short order and was pretty good looking.  Split pea soup is one of those things that I didn’t really trust as a kid, and have come to like as an adult, like girls and wearing pants.  This rendition was decent, but a bit too salty.  The consistancy was really good though, not quite a soup but not yet a stew, and had chunks of ham strewn about it like delicious little shipwreck victims.

Next came the gyro supreme.  Actually all three of us ordered gyros, which became a problem.  The waitress, noting each of our orders, one vegetarian, one regular, and one no onions with extra tomatoes, then set down each plate in front of the wrong person, a mistake we did not catch until it was too late for one of our poor group.  One of my friends and I figured that her vegetarian and my meat (ha) had been switched so we switched back, if only we had known that no-one had received the correct plate we might have been able to avoid the tragedy, but alas one of our number was wounded by the presence of onion in his gyro and stricken by the loss of his extra tomato.  We didn’t figure this out until I accidently ate what was probably his gyro .  My friend, who was getting his gyro wrapped up, noted the presence of onions in his gyro and explained what we thought had happen, the waitress did not act like she was very happy about the possibility of having to get another gyro for my friend or have the onions removed, so my friend very graciously offered to just pick off the onions himself and asked for a box.  As a note, it was not our fault that she set the wrong plates in front of the wrong person, but she just seemed angry at life in general so who knows what was wrong.  I really wanted to make a stop action video of us all running around the restaurant switching plates with the Benny Hill music playing in the background, but the bastard wouldn’t give us permission, so that dream died.

The gyro though, was good.  Not great, not bad, but good.  Slices of gyro meat stacked on a warm pita with tomatoes, no onion apparently, shredded iceberg lettuce, feta cheese (the clutch addition for the “gyro supreme”), and tzatziki sauce.  I enjoyed it, though this gyro shared the complant that I’ve had with all gyros, it’s too hard to get all the ingredients in one bite.  The sandwich is too big to fit into your mouth all at once, so you’re forced to either go for the top or bottom.  Well on the top you get all tzatziki, while on the bottom, all you get is meat.  There are about two prime bites of gyro in an entire sandwich, these occur when you’ve whittled away the edges enough to make it possible to score meat and sauce in the same bite, but by then the tomatoes have inevitably fallen out or there is no feta left, either way you never can realize that dream of the perfectly assembled bite.  It is an outcome I will keep fighting for.

All in all besides the service, the meal was nice and comforting, and not too dear.  I walked out with 9.56 less in my pocket and a full belly.  As a waddled to my car with a post-prandial belch brewing in my stomach, which at this point was waving a tiny Greek flag, I knew I would be back, even though this wasn’t anywhere near the greatest meal of my life, it was a good experience for a coney-island, I just hope that someone gives the waitress a hug before we get there next time.

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