After I wrote a review about Gyro Cave in downtown Everett, I got a call from Herald reader Mel J. Grewing.
Grewing wanted to tell me about his choice for the best place in Everett to get gyros, those Greek sandwiches filled with sliced lamb and beef and served in a pita or naan and topped with Tzatziki sauce.
Turns out Grewing has been a fan of Gyro House on Everett Mall Way for years. He told me to go there if I wanted the best gyro around.
Well, my husband Peter and I decided to go on a little quest for the holy gyro. On a recent Sunday we visited two gyro joints in two strip malls in Everett.
We visited Gyros 2 Go and Gyro House. Bottom line, you will get a delicious gyro well worth the money at either place.
For more details, here’s how it went down.
We figured it was Sunday afternoon and, all things being equal, we would do a side-by-side comparison.
The first stop was Gyros 2 Go on East Casino Road. This strip mall near a Fred Meyer was absolutely packed. Several people dining inside Gyros 2 Go, which was warm and good-smelling.
The restaurant boasts of serving Chicago-style gyros and offering halal products, which are foods Muslims are permitted to eat. Pete and I weren’t sure what was meant by a Chicago-style gyro but we ordered the basic lamb and beef gyro ($5.99) to go along with an order of regular fries ($1.99) for our 9-year-old son.
The man behind the counter was very friendly and pleasant when he took our order. Pete and I also noticed that it was late enough in the afternoon that the spits of hanging meat from which the gyro filling is sliced were put away and the cook reheated meat on the grill.
We grabbed our food and headed over to Gyro House in another uber-busy strip mall across town. (Weird, what’s with the super busy strip mall traffic in south Everett on Sunday afternoon?)
Inside Gyro House there’s a square window that opens into the kitchen. You can’t quite see all the action so we never got to see the cook slicing the meat but when we got home there was no doubt.
We ordered the same thing at Gyro House, a traditional lamb-beef gyro on pita ($4.99) and an order of regular fries ($1.99).
We opened our gyros at home and discovered they were both packed with meat. We could have easily made two additional gyros if we had extra pita bread. Oh well. We dug in.
The gyros were similar in many ways. The meat was tender and spicy, though the meat from Gyro House was more finely sliced. Both were wrapped in a delicate soft pita and both contained purple onions and tomatoes. Gyro House had a bit more of the white tzatziki sauce made of garlic and yogurt so the whole sandwich might have been a bit juicier, but we’re only talking degrees apart here.
Clearly, it was a toss-up.
I told reader Grewing about my findings. He hadn’t been to Gyro 2 Go but was happy that we were giving Gyro House some love.
In fact, Peter and I decided we would probably return to both places to try some more of their selections. With gyros this good, there’s no telling what other delicious items we’ll discover.
Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424; tgoffredo@heraldnet.com
Gyro House
620 SE Everett Mall Way, Everett; 425-513-1884.
Speciality: Greek.
Vegetarian options: Yes.
Gyro 2 Go
181-229 E. Casino Road, Everett; www.gyros2go.netSpeciality: Greek.
Vegetarian options: Yes.
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