My big fat Greek dish: At this Johnson County restaurant, one meal is enough for three

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Let’s get this out of the way right now: It’s not a “jye-ro,” rhymes with Cairo. It’s not a “hero” — that’s a sub sandwich. A gyro is pronounced “year-oh.”

“Like the year of 2023,” explains DeeDee Jovaras, who as co-owner of Mr. Gyro’s Greek Food & Pastry with her husband, Chris, keeps that little lesson handy.

Regardless of how you say it, at this restaurant, the gyro ($8.25) is a delicious bestseller, with warm, pillowy pita bread wrapped like a taco around savory slices of meat, along with tomatoes, onions and tzatziki sauce (a yummy blend of sour cream, cucumber and secret seasonings).

Yet, I’m here to tell you to order something else. I’ve been going to Mr. Gyro’s for decades, and I’ve found when I order that sandwich, I eat it all at once. It quickly becomes a distant memory.

Instead, I spend a little more and order the Gyro Plate ($10.95) and a large Greek salad ($9), and I get two, maybe three meals out of it. Plus, I get the joy of creation.

Both the plate and the salad come with small triangles of pita, the perfect amount for the mound of meat. You take a piece of the pita and pile a few slices of meat on top. Add a slice of tomato and a slice of onion. Fold it over and dunk it in the tzatziki sauce. Bliss. Cleanse your palate every so often with bites of the salad, loaded with feta cheese and tangy dressing. More bliss.

The meat, a combination of beef and lamb, comes from a Greek supplier in Chicago, Jovaras says. The restaurant roasts huge cylinders of it on rotating spits. (Here’s another language lesson for you: “Gyro” means “to turn” in Greek.) Then the cook shaves off strips with an electric knife and throws them on the grill to give them just the right taste and texture.

“It’s very healthy,” Jovaras is quick to point out, more than once. “A lot of people want us to do the french fries, but everything here is very very healthy. You feel good when you walk out. I don’t think you feel like you ate something and then you feel guilty about it afterward.”

(Unless you get the crispy-sweet, to-die-for baklava for dessert. But that’s another story.)

And though it’s all a little exotic, it’s not fancy. Order at the counter and wait until your number is called. Food is served on paper plates with plastic forks, or in plastic foam takeout containers, which I always need.

DeeDee’s in-laws, Ted and Soula Jovaras, immigrants from Greece, founded Mr. Gyro’s four decades ago, opening the first location at 83rd and Metcalf in Overland Park. Soula did all the baking. Ted did the gyros, dolmades, dressings and other savory menu items, recipes Mr. Gyro’s still uses.

Artwork from their native island of Limnos decorates the walls at the location I go to, at 8575 W. 135th St. in Overland Park. The mural in back shows the Greek island of Rhodes. And Ted’s portrait hangs at the table that was his favorite before he died almost five years ago.

When DeeDee and Chris took over the operation, they expanded the menu and the locations, which now total four. Recently their two boys, Teddy and Alekos, joined the company “and are helping move it to the next level,” their mom says.

“We are one of the few family-owned restaurants in this town that have survived this many years,” she says. “People think we’re a franchise, and we’re not. But we work it. You’re going to see me here every single day.” All the locations get that family touch, she says.

“It makes the food come out better, with better quality.”

Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.