Ilias and Maria Paragios moved to the U.S. from the island of Karpathos in Greece nearly 40 years ago and have since offered authentic Greek cuisine as part of their family-owned restaurant business.

Maria said she and her husband first moved to Chicago from Karpathos and opened a restaurant there. After experiencing success in Chicago, the couple moved to Texas. Their restaurant, Gyros King, has been located on Hwy. 242 for seven years in a unique location in the small building in the used car lot, Omega Motors.

“We always see lots of customers come here; lots of takeout food is ordered too,” Maria said. “We serve authentic Greek food; my husband is the cook here. We’re small, and we do what we can with a small kitchen here. But our food is always made fresh daily and is authentic.”

Ilias, who said he learned how to cook the meals offered at the eatery from his mother in Greece, makes a variety of Greek dishes for customers, such as gyro plates and sandwiches, Greek salads, potato and rice, hummus, and Greek desserts like  baklava.

“Our gyro is the best quality,” Maria said. “It’s cooked right because [Ilias] knows how to do it. I like any kitchen if it’s a real kitchen. We’ve been raised and brought up on this kind of food.”

Maria said the authenticity and quality of the food at the eatery is what makes Gyros King so unique, since the food itself is a part of the cuisine found in the Paragios’ homeland in Greece. Ilias said the most popular dish customers usually order at the eatery is the gyro plate, which is a served with beef and lamb gyro meat, fresh oregano garlic oven potatoes, Greek rice, Greek salad and pita bread.

The Greek salad, which is a popular side dish at the restaurant, is made with fresh tomatoes, onions, kalamata olives, lettuce, bell peppers, cucumbers and Greek olive oil dressing.

“You need to have the right ingredients and good quality food or you won’t make it as a [restaurant],” Maria said. “We’ve tried so many other [Greek] places, and it just wasn’t the same. It’s very rare to find authentic [cuisine].”

Customers can dine at Gyros King Tuesday through Saturday, with longer restaurant hours in the summer than the winter months. An open dining and seating space is available for customers after they place an order at the front of the restaurant.  However, for a couple of months out of the year, the restaurant remains closed for business while Maria and Ilias return to visit Greece.

“We close the restaurant for two months out of the year and go on vacation,” Maria said. “We just got back about a month ago from this year’s trip. We like to visit Greece every year.”

Although Maria and Ilias operate out of a small restaurant space, the owners still have no plans to expand their business in the future.

“We have no plans to expand; we just want more time for us,” Maria said. “We have been working for so long; it’s been almost 40 years.”