As I’ve mentioned a few posts ago, this was our 6th year attending and volunteering at Ohana Luau at the Lake, and that gives us quite a few opportunities to explore some of the dining options around Lake George, especially when we need to grab a quick bite. The immediate answer for this is the A&W Root Beer next door (yes, Lake George is a time capsule, including a still-functioning A&W, albeit one without car hops). But usually we’re craving something a bit more exotic, and just a short distance down the road from the A&W is one of the area’s hidden gems: the Spice Gyro & Kabab, tacked onto the end of the Sunoco station.
Spice Gyro & Kabab is a bit quirky. It’s one of those places that can’t seem to settle on a name (various places around the place give alternate names with different spellings of Kebab and sometimes being “Kebab & Gyro” instead). And the menu, while primarily focusing on gyros and kebabs and gets you into a primarily “Middle Eastern” motif, the place has a lot of Pakistani influence as well, so they’ve got a bit of a scattershot of secondary menus, including a few Pakistani/Indian dishes (okra masala, naan, and shrimp curry, for example), boba tea, fries, onion rings, and mocktails. But despite all that, the core of the menu is some seriously good Middle-Eastern fare, especially the namesake gyros and kebab dishes. I’d call Spice Gyro & Kabab a “take-out window attached to a Sunoco”, but that’s really not giving the place full credit: despite the simple ordering menu, Spice actually has three different dining levels: the covered outdoor patio by the ordering window, an actual air-conditioned dining room upstairs, and a roof-top patio that looks down on Pirates Cove Adventure Golf across the street.
On my various visits to Spice Gyro & Kabab over the years, I’ve had some pretty good lamb kabab, some good chicken seekh (ground meat, similar to a kofta of koubideh) kabab, and a few other kabab dishes, but this particular visit I was craving a gyro. Particularly since “gyros” are almost completely absent from the menus of my home Upper Valley, I just wanted some tasty beef/lamb mix, well-spiced, on a good pita with some tzatziki and fresh veggies. And that’s pretty much exactly what I got. There’s few more restorative meals than a kabab the size of your head, and everything was nicely done: the meat flavorful, with a good char from the vertical broiler. A substantial pita with a light bit of grilling, a tangy tzatziki, and fresh veggies. While nominally being enough food for two, this hit the spot, and compared to all the “resort” prices up and down Route 9 in Lake George, this is quite the value.
I really like the Spice Gyro & Kabab, and despite, or heck, probably because of some of the quirkiness, Spice is going to remain a mainstay of our quick lunch needs in Lake George. However, on future visits I need to remind myself to explore some of the other parts of the menu, like an okra masala and maybe a minty mocktail.
