Pork gyros @ Laros Greek Street Food
41 Bold St, Liverpool, L1 4EU
As I’m sure is obvious at this stage, I enjoy variety in my food. That said, I’m not someone who gets bored of eating a particular thing over and over.
Maybe it’s because I grew up a very fussy eater – I had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every day for almost 19 years – but if I enjoy something, then I’m more than happy to eat it again and again and again.
When we were last in Greece (Athens, and then Naxos) I ended up eating gyros probably ten or eleven times. This is over the course of a two-week holiday. It’s not that the other food I had there wasn’t great. We also ate rich rabbit stifado, charcoal-roast lamb, flaky cheese pie, ripe tomato salad. I just really like gyros.
So it’s fortunate that one of the best places to order gyros this side of the Ionian Sea is in Liverpool, at Laros on Bold Street.
The menu is short and sweet - three kinds of souvlaki (lamb, chicken, pork), three kinds of gyros (pork, chicken or mushroom), three kinds of vegetable fritter (courgette, tomato, chickpea) and fried cheese (Talagani, which a board above the till declares ‘better than halloumi!’).
All of these can be served with feta-flecked Greek salad, chips and pitta bread (stump up the extra 50p for corn) and accompanied by tzatziki, honey mustard or cumin yoghurt.
Laros is somewhere it’s almost impossible to go wrong. Everything I’ve tried here has been excellent – the completely vegan courgette fritters (kolokithokeftedes), for example, are as good as any bit of dead meat on a skewer you can order here.
On my most recent visit, earlier this week, I went for an old favourite – pork gyros. The meat is crisp at the edges, tender and still delicately flavoured enough that you can taste the oregano in the marinade. The tzatziki is thick with shreds of cucumber, has the sourness of strained yoghurt. The pitta (spring the extra 50p for corn) is soft and packed with fresh chips, juicy tomato and sharp but sweet red onion. A shining example of all that a gyro should be.
Washed down with a bottle of Fix, it was good practice for our next Greek holiday, which is only a few days away. As I say, I really like gyros.
