Having a fun atmosphere in a good location can make a world of difference for a Fair vendor. Dino’s Gyros has held down their location near the center of the Fairgrounds for several decades now, serving up middling food to fun-loving crowds that they cultivate with near-constant live music and a good selection of beers. Very little that they do is groundbreaking, but they offer perfectly serviceable options at reasonable prices, which there is absolutely nothing wrong with.
Their latest appetizer-style new food are their Feta Bites, a sort of Greek approximation of a cream cheese wonton. The most surprising element here is the pasta dough used to encase the feta cheese, rather than a more typical fried encasing. The pasta fries up a little on the lighter, less greasy side, and gives these bites an interesting texture. The feta itself drives all the flavor, when it exists; too many of our pieces had little to no filling inside, a major deal breaker for our enjoyment with this dish. The emptier bites were just pillowy pieces of fried pasta, a real Greek tragedy. At least these filling-less bites could be souped up with the accompanying dipping sauce, an olive tapenade that was disappointingly devoid of olives. Confusingly, the tapenade is described on their menu board as being spicy, but not even the slightest hint of heat could be found.
A saving grace is that these are reasonably priced at just $5.50 for a boat with about 8 bites. Other than the tapenade, which has an intriguing appearance that suggests more complexity than what you actually taste, these look like basically any other fried morsel you can order across the Fairgrounds. Fans of Greek flavors may want to give this a try and hope that their order is luckier than ours with the feta quantity; otherwise, these are not especially worth seeking out.
Ratings (0-5):
- Taste: 2
- Appearance: 2
- Novelty: 3
- Value: 3
Fairly Unbalanced 