They call him Mr Souvlaki. I assume it’s not his real name. You can find him in a row of shops in Northfield, down the bottom, past the Lidl, next to McDonalds. Angelic white frontage, inside a basic set-up of meats on skewers, hard tables, harder chairs, more Deliveroo drivers than customers. On the shelves are some notional products from Greece; crisps, syrupy pops, spirits that’ll retract your top lip above your gums. Mr Souvlaki comes to take the order. I ask if we can have all three dips in smaller portions to try them rather than one big in one. He says no. We order hummus and pitta, a skepati, and a pitta wrap. Some wine and some soft drinks. It comes to £37.
All three dips appear, just like we asked. It’s the first real sign that Mr Souvkaki takes it seriously. Hummus that has excellent balance, not overly worked so that it still has texture. Good amounts of garlic, not too much tahini. I like it, baby. I like it a lot. Tzatziki, whipped to the point that the yogurt stands to a point and is almost cheesy, cucumber, a little herbs and a squeeze of lemon. Very good. And Tirokafteri, who I believe used to play at left back for Liverpool, a blend of feta, charred peppers and chilli, beaten and blended to something salty and a little spicy, my new second favourite dip after skinny. Absolutelybloodywonderful. Seriously. One pitta isn’t enough, but at £1.30 each I’m not ordering anymore.
The yeeros are really lovely, just comforting amounts of chicken meat, some halloumi, chips and salad wrapped in a bread with sauce. There is nothing spectacular about it, they just do it with care so that every mouthful gets a bit of everything. I’d take this over any other gyros in Birmingham. Sophie’s skeptati is massive, so massive that we take half home for breakfast the following day. It’s a similar sort of filling to mine except she has sagnaki cheese in hers and it’s three times the size. As an aside, I’ve learnt something in writing this; I thought that ‘yeeros’ was word play on the pronunciation of ‘gyros’. I was wrong. The former means to ‘turn’, the latter means ‘spit’. It’s really much of the same.
It dawns on me whilst we are there that this is the kind of place Food Review Club would charge £1500 to review, or local instagram influencers and newsletters who claim to want to help indies out whilst charging a few hundred quid would review; and that I, forever the sceptic, would instantly dismiss because I’d know that the only time they would leave the city centre is to make money. Yet the reality is that’s on me. It’s my bigotry against that kind of transaction to instantly judge the influencers that would stop me going. Mr Souvkaki doesn’t need to shell out money, they just need to keep this standard up. It’s really very good. Very simple. Very real. As we pay up we discuss our forthcoming holiday and it turns out that Mr Souvlaki is from Crete, not a million miles from the Domes of Elounda where we are staying. He offers his mobile phone number for recommendations. No need, I tell him, we’ll be back plenty before we go away.
8/10
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