First Look: Gyro Hot Brings Fast, Filling and Affordable Greek Food to Dallas, via Iowa

Gyro Hot is a fast-food restaurant serving Greek food that first opened in 2018 in Waterloo, Iowa, before opening an outpost early this year in Far North Dallas. DFW has few gyro places, so the expansion is a welcome development for those who crave the occasional gyro or falafel sandwich. Plus, they offer the pizza puff, a fried fast-food treat that originated in Chicago: the pizza puff.
The prices are pretty good; a gyro will set you back $7.99, a falafel sandwich $6.99, and both are on the large size. We struggled to eat them in the traditional manner because of their girth and had to resort to eating them open-face at one point with a fork like the dainty little diners we can be.
To start things off, we tried some garlic cheese curds and a pizza puff, both under $5 each. The pizza puff s more or less a large Totino’s pizza roll or, if you prefer, a pizza-flavored Hot Pocket. It's a 2-by-3-inch piece of dough deep-fried and stuffed with mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce. We didn’t burn the roofs of our mouths, so that’s a plus. The cheese curds were deep-fried and scrumptiously garlicky and came with a side of tzatziki sauce. The sauce was a bit on the thin side, but the taste notes were all there. The gyro sandwich came in a lovely pita that was about 8 inches in diameter and full of flavorful the traditional lamb and beef mix, along with the requisite lettuce, tomato, diced cucumber, red onion, tzatziki sauce, and small chunks of feta, all wrapped up in a foil package. The falafel sandwich included numerous falafel and was dressed the same as the gyro. Both were extremely filling and a good bargain for their size; we struggled to finish, but finish we did. The menu also includes several burger options, most of which can be had for under $7, and sides include fried mushrooms, popcorn chicken, gizzards, and mac and cheese bites. There are also some fried fish baskets, wings, shawarma, and kabobs. The only caveat  is that we did not see the rotating mountain of cylindrical meat that one sees at such places as Afrah, where the server carves off the portion of gyro or shawarma just prior to serving. Perhaps it was in the back. We will definitely be back to try the shawarma in any event, along with one of those $4.99 cheeseburgers (Greek fast-food places often have really good hamburgers for some reason, and the price is right), but at the end of the day we’re just happy for another option to sate our  gyro craving. Now, if we could all agree on the proper way to pronounce gyro ...

Gyro Hot: 17421 Preston Road (Dallas); 11 a.m. - 9 p.m. Monday - Saturday; 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Sunday