Greek-Chicago gyros
Photo: Antonio Fajardo i López · CC BY-SA 3.0

The cone-shaped beef-and-lamb gyros loaf that Chicago's Greektown standardised in the 1970s, thin shaved meat tucked into pita with tomato, onion and tzatziki, the Halsted Street lunch staple.

Greek immigrants arrived in Chicago in volume in the 1900s, settling around Halsted and Harrison on the Near West Side, the Greektown of legend. In 1973 the Apostolou brothers and the Garlanis family at Parkview Restaurant in Skokie began turning out the cone-shaped, vertically-roasted gyros loaf of beef and lamb, reportedly America's first commercial frozen gyros cone. Kronos Foods, founded the same year in Chicago, scaled it nationally. The Halsted Street strip (Greek Islands and Artopolis) has been Greektown's food row since the original district was bulldozed for the UIC campus in 1965.

1 editor pick for Greek-Chicago gyros in Chicago, ranked by editorial score. All Chicago signature dishes · Greek-Chicago gyros across every city.

Greek Islands ★ 4.0

$$GreekGreektown

Greek Islands in Chicago is the Greektown standard on South Halsted since 1971, with the flaming saganaki tableside-presentation that the neighbourhood made.

OrderSaganaki (Opa!), lamb on the spit, gyros plate to share.

TipSunday lunch with the family is the room's natural use. Book a long table and a bottle of Boutari.

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