Samos Grill Food Truck Is Parked at an Aurora Brick-and-Mortar Home

After five years on the road with his food truck, owner Vladimir Demin took a leap of faith and opened the first brick-and-mortar location of Samos Grill this spring. It was the perfect opportunity. The previous tenant, Seasoned Swine BBQ, got tired of the commute from Golden and so Demin was able to inherit a fully-functional restaurant with all its equipment when he signed the lease in March.

“I got really fortunate that I’m on the very edge of Aurora, ten minutes away from Denver, like Long Table Brewhouse, Yuan Wonton is right there, and then basically I’m close enough to the north to Stanley Marketplace,” he explains, and because he’s technically in Adams County he got a much faster permitting approval process than if he was a few miles down the road in City of Denver. Within six weeks of signing the lease, all he needed to purchase was a panini press and a microwave and Samos Grill was officially open for business.

It might have been a quick start, but it’s not been unicorns and rainbows since. “A brick-and-mortar is definitely a different beast. You’re $5,200 out the door without even spending money on bills,” Demin says. Currently Demin is the only full-time employee, he has a part-time helper come in to do closing, but he does the majority of the shopping, cooking, serving, and cleaning. In addition, because the restaurant isn’t self-sustaining he’s still running the Samos Grill food truck on his off days.

“My life is a fairy tale,” he says laughing. “Unfortunately, the author is German.”

Since opening, Demin’s lost ten pounds and has “one to two mental breakdowns a week now, which is a standard in our industry” he describes. It’s a 180-degree pivot from a self-described Type-B partier in his twenties. “I went from that mentality to like, ‘Hey, I want to work’ But I’m to the point where I’m like a wrung-out sponge. The mind is willing but the body is a sponge and bruised and broken, but I want to keep going and keep working,” he describes.

So why does he keep going? “Being a chef and cooking is all about just sharing where you are, who you are, where you come from, and what you like as a person. Basically, it’s as much about you as a person as it is about food,” he answers.

His food is Greek…with his own twist. “Most people know it as a gyro, so we call it a gyro but it’s really doner kebab. It’s Turkish because the Ottoman Empire controlled Greece for like 350 years and a lot crosses between the cultures. I mean it’s all the same if you go to Israel, any of these places, whether it’s al pastor or shawarma or hero or gyro, whatever you want to call it, I call it delicious,” Demin says.
The menu is mostly familiar, with the exception of the cheese panini, with lamb & beef and chicken gyros, a Mediterranean salad, hummus, kebab, and beef tallow fries. But it’s all a little…different. Take the most popular dish, lamb & beef gyros. First, the meat comes from a sausage doner, Demin makes 3-pound sausages from ground beef that he toasts on the grill for a smoky flavor then bakes it in the oven so it’s crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside. He then uses a slicer to make thin slices that are tender and juicy. It’s his own invented method; it’s more efficient than the traditional spit method which requires high volume and traffic. He then piles (we’re talking a small mountain) the meat on pita with arugula, which he calls the healthiest green, before saucing it up. “Americans love their sauce,” he mutters as he absolutely pours on garlic yogurt sauce (not tzatziki, as he’s quick to point out) and Sriracha before doing the skilled tuck-and-roll method that rivals the technique of my favorite local burrito guy.

“I like tradition, I like traditional stuff but I feel like food should also evolve. Don’t be afraid to try things. You know that quote from the Magic School Bus? ‘Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!’” Demin exclaims, bouncing up and down in his seat. As you can probably tell, he’s quite a character: he speaks rapid-fire, and as a history major and a pop-culture nerd can swing from food history fact to pop-culture quote in the space of one sentence. He’s got strong opinions and he wants his food to reflect that.

“I like to joke around that Colorado only has five major food groups: hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, barbecue, and Mexican. If it’s outside of those most people don’t recognize anything. They come up and they’re like, ‘Oh, Mediterranean tacos.’” Demin says. “They want fast food.” And Demin refuses to cave. Not only does he cook the meat from scratch, piles on arugula, he also tries to avoid seed oils (which is why he still doesn’t serve falafel since he hasn’t figured out how to crisp it in beef tallow), uses mostly organic produce as well as avoids pre-mixed spice packs. “All my spices—it’s salt, pepper, paprika, granulated onion, cumin and that’s it,” he explains.
All that effort comes at a cost—his gyros are $16. Beef tallow French fries will cost you $8 more. But you’ll likely take home enough leftovers for another meal, and you’ll definitely, definitely won’t need to ask for extra meat.

“At the end of the day, like, why am I working so hard? Everybody else is just buying things frozen from a bag. No prep required, pre-cooked meat, pre-cut onions,” he muses. “But I’m crazy and I realize I’m working three, four hours just to make twenty-five-pounds of meat and ten, fifteen pounds of chicken. And at the end of the day I realize it’s about me. I’m not really doing it for the customer, I’m doing it for me. You know, I’m selfish. I want to cook this food. It’s what I want.”

Samos is located at 11601 East Montview Boulevard, Aurora, and is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. For more information, check Instagram @samosgrill_