Zorba’s Mediterranean Cuisine, OKC

Restaurant Review by Annie Nashert

Zorba’s Mediterranean Cuisine

A taste of the Mediterranean awaits you within the cool and breezy atmosphere of Zorba’s Mediterranean Cuisine. Owned by three cousins, Zorba's offers classic Mediterranean recipes passed down through their family.

Zorba’s offers fresh ingredients daily. Gyros are traditionally made of lamb, but Zorba’s uses beef and chicken with lamb seasoning in their gyros. If you prefer lamb, a marinated lamb shank ($11.50) served over rice is offered on the menu.

Zorba’s relocated to their NW Oklahoma City location in October 2007 and applied for a liquor license. Want a girl’s night out? Call your friends and head for Zorba’s and try the Romanian pomegranate wine or the refreshing pomegranate margarita.

At the time I was there, I observed many regular customers consisting of couples and families. They offer a children’s menu with gyros, corn dogs, and shish kabobs. Don’t assume it may be too exotic for your little ones. The child’s menu is served with fries on the side, how can you go wrong?

I am not familiar with Mediterranean cuisine so the menu was really all Greek to me. I have had tabouli and like most people, I am familiar with shish kabobs; but some of the seasonings were new flavors to my palate.

We started with an order of spanakopita, spinach pie (3/$3.50), a triangle of spinach and feta cheese wrapped in fillo dough and fried to a golden brown with yogurt sauce. This had a tangy after bite we were not too excited with.

We then decided on a beef western gyro ($6.00) and a chicken western gyro ($6.00). As earlier mentioned, these meats have a lamb seasoning. The beef was sliced thin and tender and the chicken had large pieces of moist chicken breast. These gyros have grilled onions, bell peppers, swiss cheese with yogurt sauce on the side. These are served wrapped in a soft, warm pita. The meats were abundant and the onions and peppers were crisp and juicy. The yogurt sauce can be drizzled over the gyro as you desire.

These gyros were accompanied with either fries or your choice of a salad. We chose the tabouli and Persian salad. The tabouli salad starts with cracked wheat marinated in fresh lemon juice and olive oil with tomato, red cabbage, very little onion, and herbs. I prefer a little more onion and tomatoes without all the large pieces of parsley stems, but it seemed to be a popular choice among the other diners. The Persian salad had fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, and red onion with fresh lemon juice and olive oil. The day I had it, it was mostly cucumber.

Though a little of either of the salads were all we required, every bite of the gyros was relished. They were overflowing and full of flavor.

There were offerings of items you would expect to see on a traditional Mediterranean menu like moosaka (layered eggplant, potato, cheese, ground beef), eggplant stew, falafel (crispy ground chickpea and assorted pea batter), and baba ghannouj (fire roasted eggplant and garlic blended with sesame seed paste); I just love the name. Enjoy whatever exotic sounding dish you decide on.