Tampa Bay Food Monster

UPDATE: trio’s, sadly, has gone under. no more trio’s.

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ah, the gyro • pizza • burger. did ever such a perfect beast exist? no. no! of course not. only in dreams. BUT. this place came close. because they INVENTED, for the first time ever, definitely, confirmed 100%, the pizza with gyro stuff on it. my god… what has science done?

the place is called trio’s. i mean, that’s what i’ll call it. technically, it’s “trio’s gyro • pizza • burger”. i think. though their “website” (aka facebook page and only online record of their existence) says it’s ”trio”- Pizza,Gyro,Burger –, which is probably not right. regardless of the name, they do have this guy:

so clearly their online presence is highly influential. i like to imagine this guy actually makes and delivers all the food himself. we’ll call him dr. trio.

one day, dr. trio came to my mailbox and dumped a flyer in there. and that flyer told me that they make “awesome pizza”. and “delicious gyros”. and “excellent burgers”. all in the same place! was this some sort of magic wonderland? because it sounds like it is. alas, it is not. it’s just a little hole in the wall located on south dale mabry. takeout. or delivery. no dine in.

so i called up dr. trio and placed an order. now, i wouldn’t say i’m a “glutton”, but what this ordered boiled down to was an entire large pizza for me. and an order of wings for me. all for me. and i got a sandwich for my girlfriend, because she has to eat too.

okay, let’s not all get too excited. i know what we’re looking at here is nothing less than a culinary masterpiece, the proverbial food of the gods, breakfast of champions, but let’s take this calmly. so. i ordered the supreme pizza, and for once i feel like somebody has produced a pizza worthy of the title. it’s topped with onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and garlic, and four of the manliest meats: pepperoni, meatballs, chicken gyro, and lamb gyro. fuck. usually a supreme gets you pepperoni, sausage (if you’re lucky), and then a smattering of shitty veggies. not here. the pizza is clearly covered in grease, which you can see gently pooling towards the center.

this pizza is a beast.

the toppings are awesome. and i mean that in the douche baggiest way possible. imagine a frat guy watching his friend do a keg stand, puke, and then pass out. “awesome.” the quality of the meat is inconsequential (though it actually is quite good, especially the two gyro meats); the fact that this pizza combines them all together is what is so great. it’s like something a stoner would come up with, existing outside a sober plane of reality due to its being too ridiculous. the highly seasoned meats play strongly against the gooey cheese (which is also pretty damn good, straight up mozzarella), and the veggies are all well chosen to stand out for what they are (the onions obviously a strong presence and accent the meats well, mushrooms for their texture, tomatoes for being surprisingly fresh and almost healthy unlike everything else here).

it’s a great flavor combination, it’s unique, and it makes you want to be best friends with this pizza.

and the crust is nothing to scoff at. they claim to use new york water in their sauce and crust, in keeping with a long held belief that the piss of new york’s homeless gives new york pizza its vaguely magical properties. well it worked well here. the crust is delicious, pillowy and crisp on the edges, though the massive amount of grease tends to leak through toward the center, causing the tips of the slices to sog. sag. dey soggy. the sauce is good, nothing special, and mostly lost underneath the toppings and cheese.

their specialty wings are chargrilled, marinated wings. as with the pizza, these wings served to make me feel manly and full. they’re good sized wings, some dipping into the scary world of “mutated monster” wings, with bits of meat sprouting out of traditional wing meat territory. this is okay as long as you’re not trying to picture it as a living animal. the flavor is largely dominated by char, but not overwhelmingly so. the marinade they use plays well with their charred exterior, giving it a bit of a spice and a kick, but not running the show. these are not wings i would want to eat all the time, but every once in a while as a special treat.

the meatball sub, which i got to try, was also surprisingly satisfying. the meatballs are pretty decent, but their cheese, the sauce, and the bread all worked together to make this thing a solid sub.

this is not the kind of place you can get food from and expect to walk away without an increased risk for heart attack. when you go here, you are going to order something devastatingly unhealthy, you are going to eat it, you are going to love it, and then you are going to die five years early. it is not food you can eat too often. and it is not the best pizza or wings i’ve ever had. but if you are in the mood for something greasy and delicious, dr. trio is the man to see. he will make you into a man.