Fifty years have already gone by since the butcher’s shop of Uncle Sideris in Gythio turned into a barbeque house. Back at that time, the butcher –meat salesman Uncle Sideris started setting up a grill outside his store and offering his tasty and aromatic traditional souvlakia.

Making skewed souvlakia at the time was a complex procedure, demanding a lot of hard work and time: you had to find the right canes, split them to make the skewers, smoothen the skewers, then cut the meat in small pieces and drive it through the skewers piece by piece by hand.

In this laborious and time-consuming procedure, Uncle Sideris had the tireless support of his mother-in-law, the now deceased granny Dimitroula.

Little by little, his grilled products business expanded beyond the sale of meat and souvlakia, also including the traditional syglino (pork smoked with aromatic herbs and stored in lard along with orange peel) and sausage of Mani, all smoked in skinta (lentisk branches) and sage, thus turning the butcher’s shop into a traditional barbeque house.

Today

This traditional taverna is located in Gythio, at Ermou and I. Ksanthaki streets. It is a strictly family-owned business (from grandfather Sideris passed to his son Takis and to his grandchildren). Even though we are in the 21st century, Uncle Sideris still prepares his souvlakia in the old traditional way. Apart from souvlakia, he also serves grilled piglet, chicken, kokoretsi and kontosouvli.   And all this served on waxed paper called "Ladokolla"!