It's not every day that you enter a café with two known aliases. Kyro's, also known as Café Isis and Al Pacino Café II, offers great pizza and ethnic food to boot. Located on the corner of Cathedral Street and W. Read Street in Mt. Vernon, it is a short three-block walk from the JHMI Peabody shuttle stop, making for a nice place to eat before or after a concert or on your way back from the Hopkins medical campus.
I was somewhat perplexed by this establishment's multiple names. Though it is called Al Pacino Café II on the Internet, the café's sign reads Kyro's, so I suppose it is safe to call it by that name. Keep in mind that Kyro's is the name to look out for when you are searching for the restaurant on the street. However, the menu displays Café Isis on its cover, which adds to the confusion.
Regardless of what it is called, this neatly arranged café does offer a wide range of Italian, Egyptian and Middle Eastern cuisine. It also offers sandwiches and salads, though the standout on the menu is the pizza, which is cooked in a brick oven and offered in 10-inch, 12-inch and 14-inch varieties.
On Kyro's takeout menu alone, there are 33 different pizzas to choose from, including vegetarian options. The most notable options: the multiple "Kyro Creations," which include the breaded calamari pizza and Ballpark pizza, and the General Kyro pizza, which features "ninja sauce," though this flavor may be too sneaky to notice.
Seafood pizzas come topped with such delicacies as smoked salmon and salmon caviar, crabmeat and shrimp. The meat pizzas span the world, from the Mexico pizza, to the California to the Hawaii, all the way around to India, Giza, Naples and back to Mount Vernon. Thankfully, all of the 10-inch pizzas cost $9.95 or less, so pick and choose to your heart's content, though it may take a few millenia to decide. The larger 12-inch pizzas cost $12.75 to $14.95, while the largest 14-inch pizzas range anywhere from $16.50 to $19.95 for the most seriously decorated offerings.
If you decide to sit down to eat, you will notice the massive drawing on the wall that depicts various stages of the pizza-making process, from the selection of ingredients to the serving of the final product. The interior on the whole could best be described as a contemporary, simple café, with modern lighting and clean booths and tables, as well as a flat screen TV tuned to ESPN.
When my friend and I went there to eat, we decided, after much deliberation, on the tapa pizza, which is actually on the take-out menu. This pizza was topped with shrimp, fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and a few different cheeses. Surprisingly fast service brought our order to our table much sooner than expected, almost to the point of suspecting that the cook knew what we were ordering ahead of time. As far as the pizza goes, the crust alone would put it towards the top of my list of best pizzas. It was perfectly done: not too thin and crispy but not too thick and gooey. There is a time and place for both thin crust pizzas and the thick deep-dish of Chicago, but I've found that a nice balance can be a good crowd pleaser.
The crust's thickness is not all that matters, though. The dough must be worked properly, and most importantly, cooked properly. This is where the brick oven comes into play. Whatever Kyro's brick oven did, it did a good job, because the crust was chewy on the inside and crispy on just the outer layer, making it easy to bite into and great to chew on. The other ingredients came together splendidly, with the sun-dried tomatoes adding a nice kick to the overall flavor. At this point, I'm being picky, but the mushrooms were very obviously from a can. I personally would have preferred fresh mushrooms, though I know some people who swear by the canned variety.
We also tried the lamb schwarma, a Middle Eastern specialty consisting of lamb marinated in herbs, then sautéed in a tangy Egyptian sauce. It came with pita bread, salad and tahina sauce. The lamb was very well-dressed and had a nice consistency with strong flavor. The pita bread was hot and plentiful, at least nine inches across. I don't know much about Schwarmas, but it was delicious.
