Daniel B.
Yelp
Bye bye, Blue Coast Burrito. Hello, Grecian Gyro.
I'm sad Blue Coast Burrito closed. I was a fan of that place: https://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-coast-burrito-atlanta. They closed December 14, 2018. In its place has come the seventh metro Atlanta location of Grecian Gyro, a local Greek fast-casual restaurant chain. It opened June 3, 2019. This is the first in-town location for Grecian Gyro. The older locations are in the suburbs.
I think this is an acceptable replacement for Blue Coast. I enjoyed it.
This Grecian Gyro is in the Berkeley Heights development on Northside Drive at I-75. There's plenty of parking (garage and surface lot). Other restaurants here include Little Azio and Ginya Izakaya. Annie Mae's Pantry closed February 15, 2019.
If you ever visited Blue Coast, the interior hasn't changed much in its transformation to Grecian Gyro. The space still feels new. There's an open kitchen with an Autodoner, a spacious dining room, and a fenced-in patio with umbrella-covered tables. There's a tiny Greek market with a couple sets of shelves selling Greek food products such as candies, dressing, honey, sour cherry syrup, grape leaves, kosher sea salt, and olive oil. During our visit, the place was clean.
The menu is simple and consists of open-faced pita plates with a protein, salad, and potatoes (about $11 each for most plates), wraps (about $6-7 each for most), Greek salads (about $6-10 each), and sides and treats like dolmades (stuffed grape leaves, $3.75) and baklava ($2.50). The restaurant also houses Izzy's European Ice Kreme, an ice cream shop that serves frozen Greek yogurt and ice cream desserts, made from vanilla soft serve, including cones, sundaes, banana splits, milkshakes, and "Izzy's Frizzies" (more on those below). The froyo and ice cream desserts run about $3-6 each.
We tried a couple wraps, a couple sides, and a couple Izzy's Frizzies.
* Gyro wrap ($6.05)
* Loukaniko (pork sausage) wrap ($6.00)
* Spanakopita ($2.75) - spinach and feta cheese baked in phyllo pastry
* Hummus & pita ($3.75) - ground chickpeas and garlic served with grilled pita
* Izzy's Frizzy - Baklava ($5.49)
* Izzy's Frizzy - Chocofreta ($5.49)
In general, the food was good. We both preferred the gyro wrap over the loukaniko wrap, the spanakopita over the hummus & pita, and the Chocofreta Frizzy over the baklava Frizzy, so those are my recommendations. That said, the other items weren't bad; they just weren't as good.
All of Grecian Gyro's wraps are made to order, served on grilled pita bread with onion, tomato, and Nick's (Koulouris, founder) Grecian sauce. The sauce is tzatziki sauce made from yogurt and cucumbers. The wraps aren't huge, but they're filling and satisfying enough. The gyro wrap definitely came packed with more meat than the loukaniko wrap. The gyro portions were generous. The gyro meat, a combination of beef and lamb, was sliced fresh off the spit. It had nice, soft texture and savory flavor. The loukaniko was made with grilled Johnsonville Italian sausage, marinated and sliced. The sausage was good quality and flavorful. Along with onion and tomato, the loukaniko wrap also came with greens. In both wraps, the veggies were crisp and ripe and the pita bread was warm, soft, and appetizing.
The spanakopita was delicious. It was served piping hot. The phyllo pastry was very flaky. The spinach and feta cheese combo was smooth, creamy, and delectable. The hummus & pita was my least favorite item. It was OK at best. The hummus was a bit drier and clumpier than I would've liked; just not the right consistency for me. I prefer smoother and creamier. Also, the triangular slices (4) of pita bread that came with the hummus were room temp and hard, unlike the pita used for the wraps. The hummus came with a pepperoncini and an olive on top.
Izzy's Frizzies are Grecian Gyro's versions of the Dairy Queen Blizzard or McDonald's McFlurry -- vanilla soft-serve ice cream with toppings mixed in. In our cases, Greek chocolate wafer bar Chocofreta and baklava. Mmm... Very yummy. The Izzy's Frizzy made with Chocofreta was better than the version made with baklava because the consistency was better; it was thicker and creamier. The baklava Frizzy tasted more thin and "watered down," possibly because the warm temperature of the baklava melted the soft serve as it was mixed in (but that's just a theory). The flavors in both Frizzies, though, was great. Chocofreta is like the Greek version of Kit Kat, but lighter, I think. Izzy's Frizzies are a nice dessert option and are good enough to warrant stopping by this place for them alone.
Service was very good. All of the staff was friendly, polite, and competent. The restaurant was slightly busy during our visit (a decent mix of dine-in and carry-out customers) and our orders came out in a reasonable amount of time.
Grecian Gyro is closed on Sundays.
