"Damn that Gyro was good!" - our cousin, Costa.
The Sad but Full Story of Kalamata:
Our family’s village is on the outskirts of Kalamata, Greece. Like everyone else in that region, they knew of the little boy from the village next door, who loved olives as much as anyone else in the world. All that boy did other than go to his tiny little school in his tiny little village was pick big, beautiful, oval-shaped Kalamata olives from olive trees that were as old as the earth itself. He would fill bag after bag of his Kalamata olives and carry them over his shoulder to the town olive mill. There, they would create the most beautiful thing in the world: Kalamata olive oil. The smell and the sight of this Kalamata olive oil always made him smile, and he would occasionally sneak of piece of bread and swipe it on the fresh olive oil to eat during his breaks. “Mmm!” he’d exclaim, as he sat with his eyes closed, always thinking it tasted better than the day before.
And yet while working in the olive fields, he longed for the day when he would leave his tiny little village, perhaps with a young lady at his side, and go on to achieve bigger and better things far, far away. “I want to go to the United States!” he would shout, and that little boy would tell everyone of his dreams to leave Kalamata and move to the States where he would open his own restaurant and make his own olive oil. A place, he would say, where he’d “take the love and pride of the olives grown on these awesome olive trees, and serve them to everyone in this new land so that they, too, can rejoice in our beautiful olive oil!”
So, did that young boy make it here and reach his dreams of opening a restaurant? No. Unfortunately, that young boy, after climbing up the side of a mountain to show off in front of a girl from a nearby village (whom he liked tremendously, btw), fell from a boulder while trying to balance on one leg, and passed. But, when we heard about this story from our father, who knew this boy before he himself came to the United States, we were impressed. We were so moved, in fact, that we decided to carry on our own family’s passion for their land and the olives grown on their own Kalamata olive trees that we opened our own fast casual Greek restaurant, called it by the name of our family’s home, and from that the Kalamata story was born.
To serve "The Best Gyro Ever Made" (at least once)
