Reading your stack is like a quick trip to NYC for me. I used to go to NYC 3 or 4 times a year. Now it has been several years since my last one. Lucky me, I can read your newsletters!
That is great to hear, Sandra, because that's what I'm aiming at. Only a third of CAFE ANNE readers live in NYC, btw which still surprises me. A lot are ex-pats, or just folks who love NYC and can't visit as often as they'd like to.
Is 7 dollar for a gyro expensive or cheap? It's 6.3 euro, and that would be considered a good price where I live in Lithuania. Although you're more likely to find Doner Kebab here which is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the same thing.
Oleg, outside of street cart fare or a bagel with cream cheese, its hard to find a decent lunch here in NYC these days for less than $10. So a $7 gyro pita (that's big enough for two people if they are sissies) really is a great deal!
As a Chicagoan, I was surprised that NYC has comparatively few Gyros shops, but then I knew Gyros was big in Chicago, and not only in especially Greek neighborhoods. (Kronos is/was the main distributor, their name is everywhere, like Vienna Beef is for hot dogs).
I grew up pronouncing it Gee-row-sss, don’t forget the ssss. Gye-row grates on the ears and will get you looked at funny in Chicago, at least.
Welcome back. You seem to have returned refreshed and ready to entertain. Food is always a blast to discuss as many of us take it personally. I have a cousin who lives in Staten Island and he seems to reflect the peculiar take on NYC for all of us. So much to say here. Some things you got right and some you got wrong haha. Today you get a lot of my opinions. (1) Chicken is the STRANGEST of choices to me in all circumstances. I'll take the worst meat thank you very much, I don't care what I eat :) GO LAMB (2) The pronunciation is YEAR-OH because that is how the originators pronounce it (3) Why not simply defer to the folks who originated the thing. When I was a kid there was a local politician named Frank Swiatek. The locals called him SWY-TECH My Mom who was fluent Polish explained to me once that the pronunciation is SHVI-AH-TEK. Who's right? Well I used to read at Church at my 90% Polish American church in Cheektowaga. The eminent challenge was pronouncing the sick and dead parishioner names properly not the crazy iron-age biblical names. Forty years later at one of my favorite events (the one you seem to intentionally ignore on your annual lake vacation), the US Open. The top ranked women's tennis player in the world is Iga Swiatek from Poland. BTW Mom was right. Why does this happen? It is an American tendency to just Americanize everything. I notice that English just ignores accents generally -- too hard I guess. Same reason we put mayonnaise on everything. (4) We ruin most things with mayonnaise. Tzatziki sauce is WORTH GETTING authentic. Try it some time. I've navigated my so far 70000 meals or so managing to eat mayonnaise perhaps 10 times. That is just about right. Greek yogurt+cucumbers+seasoning is all it takes, hold the mayo. (5) LOVING the hangover from your laundry experiment!!!
Mr. Dolan I was laughing right from "Some things you got right and some you got wrong haha."
1) Is GO LAMB like GO BILLS?
2) Everyone is agreeing with this. I am hoping to remember for the next time I order but not optimistic.
3) OMG I KNEW FRANK SWIATEK!!! Or maybe his son. Or grandson. Who sat on the Cheektowaga Town Council when I was working my first reporting job the Cheektowaga Times. Also you're right I could not care less about tennis.
4) Big fan of tzatziki. Wish it were the go-to Halal cart condiment here in NYC instead of the god-awful "white sauce". Maybe I'll make my own and carry it like a concealed weapon for food cart emergencies.
(1) If Fantasy protein was as popular as Fantasy Football, lamb would be the first pick...see what I did there? The cynics say bah (2) Iconoclasts like yourself intentionally mispronounce things as you've shared previously...have Statenites figured out how to mess up shawarma also? (3) Frank Swiatek and my Dad were great friends for many years. All of the Dolan boys got bit by dogs over the years during turn out the vote stuff in Cheektowaga. Frank LOVED the fact that my Mom was one of the few people who knew how to PROPERLY pronounce his name. SWY-TECH was just easier to say. (4) Glad you are in the tzatziki camp. Now let's turn people against the stupidity of diluting mayonnaise with ketchup or relish and calling it a sauce...CIA ex-pats would be appalled (5) Your diverse "storylets" make the Cafe a blast
Welcome back! Who needs sidewalk dining sheds when you can have parking lot picnic tables? I would love a running Café Anne series on mirrored businesses.
Also, I can’t believe you just casually dropped that John Garlic factoid in there without elaborating! I thought maybe that was a joke so I googled him and Mr. Garlic does not disappoint.
“When John Garlic enters a room, you know you’re going to have fun.” Someone needs to do a John Garlic biopic.
Now I'm wondering, would a bricks and mortar Café Anne have parking lot bistro tables? Or would you choose upcycled scrapyard bench seats from old trucks for seating? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEUiCfhPz_0
Brilliant!! What side of the street is totally a reason to choose one place over another. I’d never thought of that without you coming to that conclusion by visiting the Hut and the King. But, it makes so much sense. Even I choose places by this standard! Of course! ☺️
So funny Liz! I didn't think of it either until the Target thing popped into my head and I started to examine my own behavior. I wonder if we are also like when it comes to things like friends, clubs, etc. Scary!
There were two kitty corner Starbucks locations in Vancouver, BC, for 24 years. One of the coffee shops at Robson and Thurlow streets eventually closed due to a planned (and steep) rent increase at the end of the building's lease but both were always equally buzzy.
You must tell your friend Paul that the real gyro truth is a few blocks up Coney Island Ave at Gyro Cafe (near Beverley Road). I believe they might be a whopping 7.50 but they are VERY good. In truth I can’t recall whether the lamb was precut though….i may have been a few beers into my evening already when I happened upon this heavenly gyro oasis
That is a good tip, Amrita and I know that Paul (unlike many New Yorkers) is always happy to explore NYC outside his immediate vicinity. I will pass along! Thank you!
Wonderful read, of course! Your holiday coincided with mine so I didn’t miss the newsletter as much as I would have. We arrived in NYC at night so went immediately to Rudy’s for a $4 beer and free hotdog. Talk about not being prepared for real life - the next day we bought two hotdogs from a street cart and they were $18! I laughed so hard the guy thought I was mental.
Anyway, I’m back home enjoying drinking coffee from my blue “happy to serve you” NYC coffee cup ($17 from MoMa) and am so grateful for everything.
I keep showing off my blue coffee cup, and so far none of my friends or family (or husband) even recognise it or noticed it in movies or TV. Makes me laugh. They’ll probably recognise the video about Fox viewers ideas about NYC haha
So here down-under the gyro is called a yiros (thanks to Wikipedia) and usually comes off the cone. From this vegetarian...and reading the comments, I recently had a falafel wrap that was fantastic and did not have the concrete-filling feeling afterwards because they were home made. I'll give you the address if you ever come to Australia...
PS Did you think to invest in a geiger counter on your return to NY? (when I googled geiger counter I found this fun fact: Bananas are slightly radioactive because they are rich in potassium, and one of its natural isotopes (variants) is potassium-40, which is radioactive. A lorry full of bananas is radioactive enough to trigger a false alarm on a radiation detector looking for smuggled nuclear weapons.)
Better get back to doing some work but it's almost lunch time :)
We used to live in Brookline NH, and there was a magnificent restaurant on Rte 13, the big two lane highway that runs from the "outskirts" of Brookline to Milford NH, our county seat. It's been a lot of things in our thirty year tenure in Brookline, but when we left, it was Crysanthi's, a spectacular pizza and Gyro joint. Pronounced Yee-Roe, and staffed by genuine GREEKS. The gyro was unbelievably wonderful, and the sauce was in face tzatziki, garlic, yoghurt, dill and grated cucumber. It's been ten years since we've lived in Brookline, and your article today just made my tongue stand up and my tummy say howdy* in memory of those glorious days. I miss Crysanthi's!!
I can tell you that I was visiting New York in 1985 with a friend who looked like a Byzantine maiden out of a mosaic at the Hagia Sophia, long straight nose, rosebud mouth, deep black eyes, dark hair. We were passing a hot dog cart, and the attendant gentlemen took in my friend and made an audible remark in Greek. Without missing a beat, my friend said to him in Greek, "And you talk to your mother with that mouth?" He crumpled visibly and attempted to apologize. My friend said, "Save your breath." in Greek and we walked on giggling.
Therry the gyro sandwich you described sounds WONDERFUL. Now I WANT. Surely there must be a place in NYC that offers something along these lines. Maybe one of the Greek restos in Astoria?
Loved the story too. Moral: you never know in NYC who speaks what!
That looks like such a fun outing!! Also--I like the new "items of interest feature." How have I gone this long without knowing about the Elaine dance off?!?!
How funny that all the customers agree that the product is identical between the two places; I would have expected each establishment to have loyalists who swore that their choice was vastly superior to the local competitor, LOL. They all probably use the same supplier. I would be curious to know how many different outfits supply the meat to NYC establishments, and how different their recipies are. BTW, Greeks pronounce it "YEE-ro", but New Yorkers do our own thing, as usual.
Thanks for the pronunciation, tip, JEBNYC. It makes sense that the Greek way would be the correction way.
As for the supplier, I noted this in another comment: Gyro Hut owner says he buys his gyro from a Greek company in NJ. Gyro King says its gyro is from this place in Long Island:
I ate many a gyro in Montréal back in the day. Cheap, fast, and filling. Pronounced "gye-row" as far as I knew, and I never thought to ask! 😅 I agree with Paul... it definitely should not have been pre-sliced!
I can get a gyro a few blocks from where I live (in Victoria, BC), but it's not right. The biggest problem for me is that the bread they use isn't the thin pita-style. It's big and thick and fluffy and overpowers all the other ingredients, which is a travesty.
I'm with you BA—the pita is the proper conveyance vehicle. I even found that a little much, and ate most of my two halves forking the meat out of its wrapper.
Only launders in the building :)
That will be inscribed on my tombstone, 198.
Reading your stack is like a quick trip to NYC for me. I used to go to NYC 3 or 4 times a year. Now it has been several years since my last one. Lucky me, I can read your newsletters!
That is great to hear, Sandra, because that's what I'm aiming at. Only a third of CAFE ANNE readers live in NYC, btw which still surprises me. A lot are ex-pats, or just folks who love NYC and can't visit as often as they'd like to.
gyro hut all the way. if you go on the right day (which last time was monday before noon) you'll see the meat shaved off the cone.
LOL thanks Elissa. I'll give Paul the heads up!!
Is 7 dollar for a gyro expensive or cheap? It's 6.3 euro, and that would be considered a good price where I live in Lithuania. Although you're more likely to find Doner Kebab here which is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the same thing.
Oleg, outside of street cart fare or a bagel with cream cheese, its hard to find a decent lunch here in NYC these days for less than $10. So a $7 gyro pita (that's big enough for two people if they are sissies) really is a great deal!
My experience with Doner Kebab in Berlin was much better than gyros in the U.S., but maybe that’s just Berlin?
🌯🌯🌯😋
I had no idea those emojis were gyro emojis Per!
Where are the gyro emojis kept?
As a Chicagoan, I was surprised that NYC has comparatively few Gyros shops, but then I knew Gyros was big in Chicago, and not only in especially Greek neighborhoods. (Kronos is/was the main distributor, their name is everywhere, like Vienna Beef is for hot dogs).
I grew up pronouncing it Gee-row-sss, don’t forget the ssss. Gye-row grates on the ears and will get you looked at funny in Chicago, at least.
I believe Chicago has it right, Pam. Or at least righter than NYC.
It's actually yee-ross! No Gee! Like Ross from friends and yi from yippie! As the Greeks say it! Are the Chicago gyro different from teh NYC?
Welcome back. You seem to have returned refreshed and ready to entertain. Food is always a blast to discuss as many of us take it personally. I have a cousin who lives in Staten Island and he seems to reflect the peculiar take on NYC for all of us. So much to say here. Some things you got right and some you got wrong haha. Today you get a lot of my opinions. (1) Chicken is the STRANGEST of choices to me in all circumstances. I'll take the worst meat thank you very much, I don't care what I eat :) GO LAMB (2) The pronunciation is YEAR-OH because that is how the originators pronounce it (3) Why not simply defer to the folks who originated the thing. When I was a kid there was a local politician named Frank Swiatek. The locals called him SWY-TECH My Mom who was fluent Polish explained to me once that the pronunciation is SHVI-AH-TEK. Who's right? Well I used to read at Church at my 90% Polish American church in Cheektowaga. The eminent challenge was pronouncing the sick and dead parishioner names properly not the crazy iron-age biblical names. Forty years later at one of my favorite events (the one you seem to intentionally ignore on your annual lake vacation), the US Open. The top ranked women's tennis player in the world is Iga Swiatek from Poland. BTW Mom was right. Why does this happen? It is an American tendency to just Americanize everything. I notice that English just ignores accents generally -- too hard I guess. Same reason we put mayonnaise on everything. (4) We ruin most things with mayonnaise. Tzatziki sauce is WORTH GETTING authentic. Try it some time. I've navigated my so far 70000 meals or so managing to eat mayonnaise perhaps 10 times. That is just about right. Greek yogurt+cucumbers+seasoning is all it takes, hold the mayo. (5) LOVING the hangover from your laundry experiment!!!
Mr. Dolan I was laughing right from "Some things you got right and some you got wrong haha."
1) Is GO LAMB like GO BILLS?
2) Everyone is agreeing with this. I am hoping to remember for the next time I order but not optimistic.
3) OMG I KNEW FRANK SWIATEK!!! Or maybe his son. Or grandson. Who sat on the Cheektowaga Town Council when I was working my first reporting job the Cheektowaga Times. Also you're right I could not care less about tennis.
4) Big fan of tzatziki. Wish it were the go-to Halal cart condiment here in NYC instead of the god-awful "white sauce". Maybe I'll make my own and carry it like a concealed weapon for food cart emergencies.
5) Haha thank you!
(1) If Fantasy protein was as popular as Fantasy Football, lamb would be the first pick...see what I did there? The cynics say bah (2) Iconoclasts like yourself intentionally mispronounce things as you've shared previously...have Statenites figured out how to mess up shawarma also? (3) Frank Swiatek and my Dad were great friends for many years. All of the Dolan boys got bit by dogs over the years during turn out the vote stuff in Cheektowaga. Frank LOVED the fact that my Mom was one of the few people who knew how to PROPERLY pronounce his name. SWY-TECH was just easier to say. (4) Glad you are in the tzatziki camp. Now let's turn people against the stupidity of diluting mayonnaise with ketchup or relish and calling it a sauce...CIA ex-pats would be appalled (5) Your diverse "storylets" make the Cafe a blast
Welcome back! Who needs sidewalk dining sheds when you can have parking lot picnic tables? I would love a running Café Anne series on mirrored businesses.
Also, I can’t believe you just casually dropped that John Garlic factoid in there without elaborating! I thought maybe that was a joke so I googled him and Mr. Garlic does not disappoint.
“When John Garlic enters a room, you know you’re going to have fun.” Someone needs to do a John Garlic biopic.
Thank you Rob, it's great to be back. I really did miss the newsletter! I know you just had long break yourself and I hope you enjoyed.
So glad you Googled Mr. Garlic, haha.
Now I'm wondering, would a bricks and mortar Café Anne have parking lot bistro tables? Or would you choose upcycled scrapyard bench seats from old trucks for seating? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEUiCfhPz_0
Haha I am far too lazy to put that much work into anything!
Brilliant!! What side of the street is totally a reason to choose one place over another. I’d never thought of that without you coming to that conclusion by visiting the Hut and the King. But, it makes so much sense. Even I choose places by this standard! Of course! ☺️
So funny Liz! I didn't think of it either until the Target thing popped into my head and I started to examine my own behavior. I wonder if we are also like when it comes to things like friends, clubs, etc. Scary!
Years ago I was told of a statistic that said 85 percent of satisfied customers will still go elsewhere if it suits them
There were two kitty corner Starbucks locations in Vancouver, BC, for 24 years. One of the coffee shops at Robson and Thurlow streets eventually closed due to a planned (and steep) rent increase at the end of the building's lease but both were always equally buzzy.
You must tell your friend Paul that the real gyro truth is a few blocks up Coney Island Ave at Gyro Cafe (near Beverley Road). I believe they might be a whopping 7.50 but they are VERY good. In truth I can’t recall whether the lamb was precut though….i may have been a few beers into my evening already when I happened upon this heavenly gyro oasis
That is a good tip, Amrita and I know that Paul (unlike many New Yorkers) is always happy to explore NYC outside his immediate vicinity. I will pass along! Thank you!
Wonderful read, of course! Your holiday coincided with mine so I didn’t miss the newsletter as much as I would have. We arrived in NYC at night so went immediately to Rudy’s for a $4 beer and free hotdog. Talk about not being prepared for real life - the next day we bought two hotdogs from a street cart and they were $18! I laughed so hard the guy thought I was mental.
Anyway, I’m back home enjoying drinking coffee from my blue “happy to serve you” NYC coffee cup ($17 from MoMa) and am so grateful for everything.
I keep showing off my blue coffee cup, and so far none of my friends or family (or husband) even recognise it or noticed it in movies or TV. Makes me laugh. They’ll probably recognise the video about Fox viewers ideas about NYC haha
I am LOL, Lucy at the fact that the $9 hotdog made you laugh. That is the correct response!
And so fun you got the HAPPY TO SERVE YOU mug from Moma.
Wonderful to hear about your visit. Thank you!
So here down-under the gyro is called a yiros (thanks to Wikipedia) and usually comes off the cone. From this vegetarian...and reading the comments, I recently had a falafel wrap that was fantastic and did not have the concrete-filling feeling afterwards because they were home made. I'll give you the address if you ever come to Australia...
PS Did you think to invest in a geiger counter on your return to NY? (when I googled geiger counter I found this fun fact: Bananas are slightly radioactive because they are rich in potassium, and one of its natural isotopes (variants) is potassium-40, which is radioactive. A lorry full of bananas is radioactive enough to trigger a false alarm on a radiation detector looking for smuggled nuclear weapons.)
Better get back to doing some work but it's almost lunch time :)
Wow Ruth I love the idea of going around with a geiger counter. Now I have to find out how much they cost...
Ok, this is so funny: Walmart sellls them for $19.95. But you can spend as much as $900. I wonder what is the difference?
We used to live in Brookline NH, and there was a magnificent restaurant on Rte 13, the big two lane highway that runs from the "outskirts" of Brookline to Milford NH, our county seat. It's been a lot of things in our thirty year tenure in Brookline, but when we left, it was Crysanthi's, a spectacular pizza and Gyro joint. Pronounced Yee-Roe, and staffed by genuine GREEKS. The gyro was unbelievably wonderful, and the sauce was in face tzatziki, garlic, yoghurt, dill and grated cucumber. It's been ten years since we've lived in Brookline, and your article today just made my tongue stand up and my tummy say howdy* in memory of those glorious days. I miss Crysanthi's!!
I can tell you that I was visiting New York in 1985 with a friend who looked like a Byzantine maiden out of a mosaic at the Hagia Sophia, long straight nose, rosebud mouth, deep black eyes, dark hair. We were passing a hot dog cart, and the attendant gentlemen took in my friend and made an audible remark in Greek. Without missing a beat, my friend said to him in Greek, "And you talk to your mother with that mouth?" He crumpled visibly and attempted to apologize. My friend said, "Save your breath." in Greek and we walked on giggling.
Poor guy.
* stolen from the song Shoofly pie and Apple Pandowdy https://open.spotify.com/track/2mAmoc8dgctwRw9TvYjImW
And here's Chrysanthi's Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/ChrysanthisRestaurant/
FIELD TRIP!!!!
Therry the gyro sandwich you described sounds WONDERFUL. Now I WANT. Surely there must be a place in NYC that offers something along these lines. Maybe one of the Greek restos in Astoria?
Loved the story too. Moral: you never know in NYC who speaks what!
That looks like such a fun outing!! Also--I like the new "items of interest feature." How have I gone this long without knowing about the Elaine dance off?!?!
Right? Apparently its an annual thing, Jill. Whoever thought it up is a genius of fun!
totally agree but i have an excuse
How funny that all the customers agree that the product is identical between the two places; I would have expected each establishment to have loyalists who swore that their choice was vastly superior to the local competitor, LOL. They all probably use the same supplier. I would be curious to know how many different outfits supply the meat to NYC establishments, and how different their recipies are. BTW, Greeks pronounce it "YEE-ro", but New Yorkers do our own thing, as usual.
Thanks for the pronunciation, tip, JEBNYC. It makes sense that the Greek way would be the correction way.
As for the supplier, I noted this in another comment: Gyro Hut owner says he buys his gyro from a Greek company in NJ. Gyro King says its gyro is from this place in Long Island:
https://www.halandalmeats.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwxNW2BhAkEiwA24Cm9PTcRe3qyDejLghnSRgrKZFhrxNBOwIbMTFMvC8lf7hNv2TnnacnGBoC44oQAvD_BwE
Interesting; thanks!
I ate many a gyro in Montréal back in the day. Cheap, fast, and filling. Pronounced "gye-row" as far as I knew, and I never thought to ask! 😅 I agree with Paul... it definitely should not have been pre-sliced!
I can get a gyro a few blocks from where I live (in Victoria, BC), but it's not right. The biggest problem for me is that the bread they use isn't the thin pita-style. It's big and thick and fluffy and overpowers all the other ingredients, which is a travesty.
I'm with you BA—the pita is the proper conveyance vehicle. I even found that a little much, and ate most of my two halves forking the meat out of its wrapper.