BOSTON – Demetrios and Penny Christoforou have dotted the state of Massachusetts and the beautiful city of Boston with a chain of Greek restaurants featuring authentic homemade tastes that attract thousands of Greek-Americans and fellow American citizens.
They started with the Brothers Kouzina in Peabody, MA and now they have opened two more stores under the name Gyro City in Boston. One is located at 88 Peterborough Street in the heart of Boston and the other at 181 Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton, a short distance from Boston College.
Their son Polyvios manages the two Gyro City restaurants in Boston and Penny said during an interview with The National Herald, “we are going to continue to open more.” They are presently searching for the right locations.
Polyvios is a young man with vision and ambition. Asked how many more Gyro City venues he was planning to open, he said, “we don’t have a specific number in mind.”
Penny comes from Kalavrita and Demetris from Kalamata; they have worked, and continue working very hard.
TNH found Penny at the Gyro City in Brighton, working tirelessly. She told TNH, “initially I was going to take half of the space in this store, but I thought about the future for a moment, about my son Polyvios, and I said to myself, ‘we will take the other half as well and we are going to make it a preparation unit, and that is what we have done. We prepare all the food here and we will transport it to the other stores that we going to open in Boston,” and she added – “in good locations.”
The Gyro City restaurants specialize in authentic gyros, souvlakia, biftekia, chicken, keftedes, lamb chops, dolmades (grape leaves) just to mention a few items. Penny said, “we are what our slogan says “a taste of Greece in the heart of Boston.”
She emphasized that “everything is made here fresh with authentic ingredients as in Greece.”
It all started when her daughter Angeliki was studying Law at Boston College. Penny said, “I knew the area because we use to visit our daughter when she was a student and she always used to tell me there was no Greek restaurant around there. That stuck in my mind and as soon as I saw this store in this location I said to myself ‘this is it we are going ahead’ and the rest is history.”