WILKES-BARRE — One reviewer said the meat was succulent, another reported the food was “pretty flippin’ fantastic,” and a third offered this rather extreme tribute: “If I were sentenced to death, my last meal request would be a King of King gyro.”
All of these remarks, and hundreds of others, all written on colorful Post-it notes, spill over 18 billboards and fill several scrapbooks at King of Kings Gyros, a compact take-out restaurant Eric Negron of Hanover Township owns with his father, Ed, and twin brother, Jason.
Many of the notes, collected during the past four years since the restaurant opened on Public Square, offer opinions about the food. Others, Eric Negron said, are “just people leaving their mark, like ‘John Doe was here.’”
Some writers leave their mark with a cheerful thought such as “Mr. Sun came up and smiled at me;” others with something more cryptic, such as” Hollywood nwo 4 life,” which could be a reference to the New World Order of professional wrestling. “I have no idea,” Negron said.
One philosophical type wrote “How do you keep an idiot in suspense?” alongside an arrow directing the reader to turn the note over. The other side has the identical message.
As for artist customers, some of whom Negron considers “Picassos,” they’ve drawn everything from a detailed, all-seeing eye to cartoon characters such as Spongebob Squarepants or Fred Flintstone. One crafted from paper a three-dimensional overstuffed gyro to add to a note.
Negron’s own artistry, he said, is making edible gyros — some from chicken, some from a blend of beef and lamb that he carves from a vertical spit, many of them flavored with a yogurt/cucumber/garlic tzatziki sauce.
The gyros have lots of fans, but two King of Kings customers who stopped by on a recent Thursday afternoon praised the pierogies, too.
“The pierogies are awesome,” said Rhonda Carl, a King’s College student who hails from Hegins in Schuylkill County. “I live close to where Mrs. T’s Pierogies are made (at the Ateeco facility in Shenandoah) and these are better than Mrs. T’s.”
A fan of both pierogies and gyros, fellow student Melissa Colon of Bethlehem admitted she drew the detailed eye on a Post-it note. She also compiled the scrapbooks at King of Kings Gyros, so while you’re waiting for Negron to fill your order, you can find plenty of reading material organized into neat categories.
If you’re so inclined, you can add your own mark to Negron’s collection; he tends to keep blank Post-it notes available for the next batch of artists and writers.
