**** The Greek Cafe has closed
Located in the same Mission Valley strip mall as Tandoor Indian Cuisine and El Portal is The Greek Cafe.
More of a “casual-fast” style restaurant, the Greek Cafe serves everything from Lamb Shank to Spanakopita. But the item I usually order is the Gyros Sandwich($4.85)
Though I can get a pretty decent sandwich with salad and fries for $4.95 at Mediterranean 
Cafe in Hillcrest, the Gyros Sandwich at the Greek Cafe is not too bad. The sandwich is served on a large toasted pita and I enjoy the really thick and creamy tzatziki that is slathered on the sandwich. On this visit the roma tomatoes were especially ripe and added a nice sweetness to the Gyros Sandwich. Other then that, it’s a purely routine Gyros sandwich, whose taste faded into memory almost as soon as I devoured it. Not good, not bad, but still better then any of the fast food options available.
On a recent visit I decided to order something different and had the Beef Souvlaki Sandwich($4.85).
Same toasted pita; though the tomatoes were not as ripe. But what threw me off was the lack of Beef Souvlaki. As the old commercial used to say; “Where’s the beef?”
Here have another look. Can you find it? Seems more like a veggie pita, doesn’t it?
But after some digging, I did discover some beef. The Beef was very mildly flavored though very tender, but totally “lost” in all of the slightly bitter iceberg lettuce. What a waste.
I did learn a valuable lesson. Sometimes it’s really not worth trying to find a “hidden gem”, in an environment that really wouldn’t seem to support such efforts. After all, it seems that The Greek Cafe is just Casual Fast Food, nothing wrong with that. At least there is another option that adds some variety in the “Fast Food – Chain Restaurant Purgatory” that is Mission Valley.
The Greek Cafe
5618 Mission Center Road
San Diego, CA 92108