Maras Gyros & Grill
Oct 28th, 2012 | By Peter Minakis | Category: Beer, Danforth, Featured, Greek Grill, Greek Wine, Meat, Talk Toronto
A friend of mine told that a new Gyro joint opened on the Danforth and I immediately headed into Greektown to check this new spot. After a spate of Greek shops having closed, this news made me smile. I’m optimistic.
Maras Gyro & Grill is located on the south side of the Danforth, just west of Logan. The space is clean, newly renovated and the owner Christos (Maras) insistes everything on the menu is housemade. Like the name of the shop, the focus is Gyro – both pork and chicken and they also offer both varities of meat in souvlaki form.
Pork Gyro
Souvlaki on a stick, Gyro on a vertical rotisserie. Maras’ pork is made of pork butt and the chicken comes for leg and thigh meat You won’t get any of that “Chicago style” mystery meat here. Greek food has morphed into many things outside of Greece – some good, some bad. Forget that mystery-meat crap. Gyro in Greece is made of real, identifiable meat and that’s what Maras offers.
The pork tastes like pork and the chicken tastes like chicken, seasoned well but not with too much spices to cover up the meat. With pork butt and chicken leg and thigh used for both Gyro and souvlaki…you’re gonna get juicy, succulent meat.
The fries are hand cut on the premise and fried to order. The Tzatziki is made daily with strained Greek yogurt, garlic, wine vinegar, olive oil and some dill.
chicken Gyro
I was delighted to taste (and find out) that Maras’ Greek Salad is made with Greek Feta cheese, ripe tomatoes, Greek olive oil, Kalamata olives and Greek olive oil.
If I haven’t convinced you to head over to Maras yet, head over to try one of the many alcoholic, non-alcoholic beverages imported from Greece. There’s Ivi soft drinks, still and sparkling water, Greek wine.
Maras is located at 467 Danforth Ave., near Chester subway and open daily. Call for hours at 416-778-6880.
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© 2012, Peter Minakis. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://kalofagas.ca then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at truenorth67 AT gmail DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author.
Tsikago meat! haha, glad it was the real deal there. I can’t wait to eat food like this (and have my husband try it – he loves gyros but only has had the crappy gyro meat).
Doesn’t tzatziki have to involve a fair amount of cucumber and a little mint? Mind you I’m glad there’s some garlic in there. One of the few times that Greek and Middle Eastern cuisine uses garlic, but absolutely essential, and so often (in the UK anyway) it is omitted, and without a little rasping raw garlic hit, it’s just dull dull dull. So quick and easy to make, and it always gets eaten up very quickly!
James, a proper Tzatziki also has grated cucumber and dill (mint is rare). I have a really good Tzatziki recipe here on my site.
Well let’s hope this Greek place manages to stay open then! The meat looks fantastic – as does the Greek salad. I hate it when friends come to Turkey for the first time and we have to really convince them to try a döner kebab because they think the meat is the cereal-packed processed stuff you see in the UK. It takes them a while to realise that there are actually kebabs with real meat in them.
Julia
Took your advice and went to Maras on the Danforth. My cousins came up from Battle Creek, Michigan and I wanted to take them somewhere different other than Mezes. The presentation was lovely, the food was fantastic and the price was right. Theo, one of the owners was very accommodating and I would definitely recommend this place to my friends. Thanks again for the recommendation and I love your blog. Keep them coming!