Kavos Gyros in Poughkeepsie, NY

This weekend, Gary and I are on our way to Vermont to pick out a dinning room table. Then, we are heading to Canada.

As soon as we were on the road, our first order of business was to find a place for dinner in between NJ and VT, so I grabbed our copy of Roadfood from the back seat of the car... but for the first time, our trusted gastronomical guide let us down. Literally there was nothing listed along I-87 - just a long, lonely, squiggly line moving north along a barren page. Sorry eastern upstate NY - you're apparently a virtual Roadfood wasteland.

Changing tactics, I hopped on the Internet with similar frustration ... until I studied a map and determined that Poughkeepsie was close enough off of I-87 for a slight detour - I was certain that we could find something to eat there.

And find we did.

We needed something quick but local. (Our one cardinal rule while traveling is: no fast food or restaurant chains.) TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Urbanspoon all gave ridiculously high ratings to a little gyro place called Kavos, so we decided to give it a try.

The gyros were awesome. If you've never had a gyro, they are sort of like a Greek version of an overstuffed soft taco.

I had a gyro with hummus, carrot-cabbage slaw, tabouli and pork (pictured below), and Gary had a gyro with roasted red peppers, caramelized onions, goat feta and garlic arugula.

The flavors in my gyro worked well together -- the pork was slightly sweet and smokey, the hummus was rich and creamy (but not too heavily applied), and the entire flavor profile was brightened by the carrot-cabbage slaw and tabouli (which is a fresh, finely chopped salad of tomato, cucumber, parsley, mint, garlic, onion, olive oil and lemon juice).

We also ordered a side of fries with oregano, lemon and sea salt. The fries were the thick cut kind, which I like, but a little dry. Gary and I both loved the oregano and lemon, but we couldn't taste the sea salt... with ketchup they were perfect.

We did, however, have two "non food related" complaints: 1. No bathrooms, and 2. Only 8 tables (seating for 16) and half of the tables (like ours) were made out of wire... so the juices from our gyros seeped through the holes in the table, and got all over our pants.

We left Kavos with happy bellies, anticipating the bathtub jean scrubbing awaiting us just a mere 4 hrs and 27 min. down the road. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone