Souvlaki GR – Delicious Greek Food in the Lower Eastside

Souvlaki GR was originally a popular food truck that is still in operation.  However, they recently opened up a sit down restaurant in the Lower Eastside close to where I live.  I saw the truck parked on Stanton Street a little over a month ago and decided to grab some food from it, but it was closed.  However, I noticed the restaurant and decided this could be a great addition to the neighborhood, so we checked it out the other weekend.

The restaurant is a long thin restaurant that is painted all in white and blue and decorated to look like Greece.  I’ve never been to Greece, but the décor looks like something you see in one of those pictures in a travel magazine.  I really liked the décor; it doesn’t feel like the Lower Eastside at all and just feels very relaxing.

The service was a little disjointed as I think they were still trying to figure out all the logistics, but everyone was really nice and very apologetic when they realized we hadn’t been served.  It was a big deal and I thought the service was fine overall.

On to the food:

Pikilia:

This was a platter consisting of warm pita bread with tzatziki taramousalata (caviar puree), hummus (mashed chickpea spread), melitanosalata (eggplant spread), tzatziki (yogurt sauce), kalamata olives and fries with oregano, salt and pepper.  The tzatziki taramousalata was caviar that is pureed with tzatziki (yogurt sauce), so it’s got a creamy flavor that is combined with a salty flavor from the caviar. The hummus was a good version; it was delicious, smooth and flavorful. Melitanosalata was mashed eggplant that was a bit sour almost like a relish; it was a refreshing change from the rest of the platter.  Tzatziki is delicious and the version here was a nice version.  Overall, I like these types of platters and everything tasted fresh and good.  7.75/10

Greek Fries:

This was French fries sprinkled with feta, oregano, salt and pepper.  I have no idea whether these are an American invention or something that is really eaten in Greece, but I really liked these as I love fries.  The fries were freshly fried and the combo of the feta, oregano, salt and pepper went really well together. It’s little hard to eat because the feta doesn’t stick that well to the fries, but overall I thought these were delicious.  8.25/10

Box of Stix:

This was a combo of grilled chicken and pork skewers with pita and tzatziki.  The skewers are the literally the same kind you get on any corner from street vendors in Manhattan, but they were much better quality.  The meat was tender and juicy and they were seasoned simply with oregano and salt.  Because of the simplicity of the seasoning you could really taste the chicken and pork flavors, which I liked.  They actually tasted similar to Japanese yakitori.  Overall, I liked these quite a bit. 8/10

Overall, it was a cool little place and I liked the food especially the fries.  It’s the type of place I could go fairly regularly for a casual lunch on the weekends.  I’d recommend trying it out.

Address:
116 Stanton St (between Ludlow St & Essex St)
Manhattan, NY 10002
(212) 777-0116
www.souvlakigr.com