souvlaki – Michael Eats

Location: 80 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Website: https://mamakas.ca/

Mamakas Taverna had a booth at the recent OssFest street festival on Ossington, serving up chicken and pork souvlaki. It was almost improbably good. Like, is the food at a street festival even allowed to be this good? It was easily the best souvlaki I’ve ever had.

It’s simple enough — it features pita bread slathered with tsatziki, and topped with chunks of pork and tomatoes (onions are also an option, though I skipped those).

Every element here is amazing. The pork is cooked on a spit over coals, giving it a nice smoky flavour. It’s perfectly cooked and amazingly juicy.

They chop the pork up and toss it in some kind of magical, zesty sauce; little touches like this make all the difference. The pork would have been perfectly delicious if they had just served it as-is, but that sauce kicks up its flavour, adds additional moisture, and elevates the wrap from good to great.

The creamy, mint-and-garlic-infused tzatziki is just as delicious as the pork, and complements it exceptionally well. And the bread is the perfect vehicle — it’s fresh, a little bit chewy, and amazing. The whole thing is exceptionally delicious.

Location: 155 John Street, Toronto
Website: http://ohmygyro.ca/

Oh My Gyro serves what’s probably one of the better gyros in the city, though it’s a pretty clear case of “too much of a good thing.”

I got the chicken gyros wrap (you can also get beef doner, chicken souvlaki, or falafel), which comes crammed with chicken, tomato, tzatziki, garlic sauce, and hot sauce (and onions, which I elected to skip).

Seriously: it’s a hefty wrap. The photo makes it look pretty normal, but it was filled with a dense reserve of chicken, probably about the size of my forearm. It must have weighed about a pound.

It’s good quality stuff — the chicken is super tender, with a good amount of crispy bits (I probably could have used more, but then you can never have enough crispy bits). This might have been my imagination, but it had a slightly lamby flavour, like they had mixed lamb fat in with the chicken. Whatever it was, it was good stuff.

But there was a little bit too much of it. It made the wrap ridiculously difficult to eat without making a huge mess, and the balance of flavours was a bit off. The wrap only cost about eight bucks, and would have still been a great deal with about half the amount of meat.

That’s a fairly minor complaint, though. Everything about this wrap worked really well — the herby flavour, the delicious garlicky sauces, the zippy hot sauce (I went with extra hot, and it wasn’t kidding around), the fresh tomatoes, and the soft and chewy pita bread. Even the fries worked really well — I’m normally not a huge fan of fries in a sandwich, but these were fresh and tasty, and complimented the wrap’s other flavours perfectly.

Tag: souvlaki

Mind-Blowing Souvlaki at Mamakas Taverna

Tasty Greek Wraps at Oh My Gyro!