You Gotta Try This: This lamb gyro sources from the heartland and local farmland

This is “You Gotta Try This,” The Bee’s series featuring one particular must-have dish at a local restaurant. Each featured dish is nominated by a reader and chronicled at sacbee.com. Got a menu item you want to shine some light on? Email reporter Benjy Egel at begel@sacbee.com.

Feta imported from Greece. Lamb sourced from Superior Farms in Dixon. Organic cucumbers and tomatoes bought from the Certified Farmers Market under the Interstate 80 overpass on Sundays.

Using fresh, locally sourced ingredients helps Greek Food Imports’ $11.95 lamb gyro attain a level of brightness that’s hard to find at competing restaurants. But items like the Dodoni feta give Greek Food Imports legitimate clout among Mediterranean natives in Arden-Arcade.

Cooking space is scant at Greek Food Imports; Kosta and Julia Panayotakopoulos’ store functions as an international grocery with prepackaged olive oil, coffee beans, bread and more from Greece as well as store-prepared items. Though it has more than 20 items such as dolmades, avgolemono and five types of Greek cookies, only the four gyros are made to order and take little in-the-moment assembly.

Kosta slow-cooks the Halal lamb in advance with salt, pepper and a few other seasonings before loading it into thick, chewy Stonefire naan, slathered with tzatziki and housemade harissa paste. Sliced tomato, radish, cucumber and red onion go in as well before the gyro is topped with feta.

Julia’s harissa paste includes ground coriander and crushed red pepper as well, said their son Aristotle, an American River College engineering student who mans the shop when Kosta and a part-time employee aren’t around. She also makes the baklava, moussaka (eggplant casserole) and pastiso (a sort of Greek lasagna) sold in glass cases near Greek Food Imports’ register.

“Our mission is simple. We are dedicated to procuring the finest ingredients available to create genuine, honest Greek food using traditional Greek family recipes, while being transported to Greece,” Kosta wrote in an email. “We want all our customers to experience warm Greek hospitality that never lets up once you walk through our doors.”

Research trips and family ties take Panayotakopouloses back to Kalamata, where Kosta’s grandparents met before moving to San Francisco in the 1920s. His grandfather and father ran a long-closed restaurant called Kafenion Anatolia (Greek for “Cafe Sunrise”), which inspired Kosta in part to open Greek Food Imports in the Oaks Shopping Center in September 2016, Aristotle said.

Dinner service is nearly nonexistent during the winter, when Greek Food Imports closes around sundown on most weekdays and 3:30 on Saturday. Spring and summer hours (11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday) will resume April 1 — good news for sales of lamb gyros, which Aristotle said many people seek out above the restaurant’s chicken, pork or vegetarian options.

“All the gyros sell well, really. But most people think ‘Greek: lamb,’” Aristotle said. “It’s kind of like our signature thing.”

Next up for the Panayotakopouloses: souvlaki. Kosta plans to grill the skewers on Greek Food Imports’ outdoor patio, which also hosts an annual festival celebrating Greek culture each summer.

“Clearly, we want to bring a little bit of Greece to Sacramento,” Aristotle said. “It’s all just supposed to be a little slice of Greece.”

GREEK FOOD IMPORTS

650 Fulton Ave., Sacramento, (916) 489-1350

Info: greekfoodimports.com

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, closed Sunday.

Pro Tip: Aristotle is working on a feature-length film about a gyro shop and deliver boy, starring Kosta as the shop owner (he grew a mustache for the role). His 2016 short film “The Secret Stash,” submitted through a family friend due to age restrictions, was one of 10 winners at the 2016 Tribeca Snapchat Film Festival.