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| - So, I was out in this neighborhood at that point of the evening when all you want to do is have some food you really wouldn't want to eat sober, then drink a tall glass of water and get to sleep. This place looked very promising from the outside, a hole in the wall Italian joint that offered pizza by the slice, according to a small whiteboard in the window.
So I walk in and there is no menu board. Hmm. I look around for a menu on the counter, or a carry out menu near the door or something. No and no. A middle aged man and woman behind the stop their conversation in another language (not Italian) and the guy asks "What do you want". Me: "Pizza by the slice." Him: "We're all out." Then we just kind of look at each other for a while, as I wait for him to offer an alternative, or to say that the next batch will be in X minutes. No luck however, so I just walk out. . .
As I'm leaving, I notice one other item advertised on the white erase board: a Gyro special. So, now that I know they offer at least two types of food, I decide to try again. I return to the counter and this time the woman asks me what I want. I say "A gyro" (pronounced "yee-roh"). Her: "A what?" Me: "A yee-roh" Her: "Wha?t" Me: "A Jie-roh." OK, I know that ""Jie-roh" is the more common pronunciation amongst non-Greeks, but how do you actually work at a restaurant that serves this product and not even know there are two pronunciations? This is what we in the amateur restaurant review industry refer to as A Very Bad Sign. But after crossing this language barrier it turns out that they are in stock, and I get one to go.
How was my Jie-roe? Well, remember the gyros you got in the high school cafeteria, with the razor thin slices of pressed mystery meat, the flavorless limp white/yellow lettuce, one sad tomato and some white goo that has been prepared by someone who has never heard the word Tzatziki in their lifetime? It tasted like that.
Other people seemed to have better luck with the pizza. That is the positive note I will end on.
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