Pork gyros @ Laros Greek Street Food
41 Bold St, Liverpool, L1 4EU
As is, I’m sure, 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 was over the course of a two-week holiday. It’s not that the other food I had there wasn’t great, we ate beautiful rabbit stifado, charcoal-roasted 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 or pork), three kinds of gyros (pork, chicken or mushroom), three kinds of vegetable fritter (courgette, tomato or chickpea) and fried cheese (Talagani, which a board above the till declares ‘better than halloumi!’).
All of these can be served with feta-laden Greek salad, chips and pitta bread and accompanied by tzatziki, honey mustard dressing or cumin yoghurt.
Laros is somewhere it’s almost impossible to go wrong. Everything I’ve tried here has been fantastic — the completely vegan courgette fritters (kolokithokeftedes), for example, are as good as any bit of dead meat on a skewer or spit 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 inside 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 is soft and packed with hot, fresh chips, fresh tomato and sharp but sweet red onion. A shining example of all that a good gyro should be.
Washed down with a bottle of Fix Hellas, it was good practice for our next Greek holiday, which is only a few days away. As I say, I really like gyros.
