With completely friendly service full of enthusiasm for the offerings, ordering a meal at Whaddapita! is easy enough to do.

Add to that welcome, nicely grilled chicken and pork laced on sticks, a spicy sauce that really heats up your mouth, creamy tzatziki that cools it down, and delightful freshly made fries, and you have a fast-food meal the way it should be.

Additional Photos

Kiesha Nelson serves a platter at Whaddapita! on Forest Avenue in Portland. The restaurant makes its own Greek yogurt, used as the base of the tzatziki and offered for dessert. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Is the screaming color scheme of lime green, cobalt blue and orange red and the grinning food-folks on the walls — like a cartoon gyro you can look forward to gobbling up — part of a grand scheme?

Is this spot, rebuilt with months of patience inside the former site of Chef Et Al (waiting for Unitil to put in a connection for the restaurant’s gas line caused a seven- or eight-month delay), a franchise in the making?

“We’re planning on having more of them,” owner Pavlo Casvikes said, adding that his family came from the restaurant business. “We came up with something like this — simple, but fresh and homemade that you can get fast.”

Feta cheese pie ($4.94) is tangy and creamy with the addition of ricotta. It’s encased in a tender, thin crust of golden phyllo, which is stretched on the premises and tastes thoroughly fresh. One variation adds spinach and seasonal greens to the feta.

Three cheese pie ($5.25) holds Kasseri, Kelalotiri and Vermont cheddar cheeses — I’d like to try that next.

The grandma mentioned a few times in the menu taught Casvikes to make the phyllo. “It’s hard because you have to roll it out by hand, you have to make it thin, and be careful it doesn’t dry out,” he said. “But it’s worth it.”

Casvikes said his grandmother, who lives in New York, was at the restaurant when it opened. Casvikes himself is from the Bronx and now lives in Saco.

You don’t come to Whaddapita! for the wine and beer, although a bottle of Greek Mythos beer ($4.50) is innocuous enough. The Fronterra Malbec is kept in the refrigerator and sold in individual bottles, as is Sutter Home Chardonnay ($4.25).

But you might come to this brightly lit place for the dip platter ($7.95), especially if the kitchen would consider jazzing up the bland hummus. The feta dip is full of vibrant salty good flavor, and the eggplant dip makes a good foil that’s cool and light on the tongue.

Freshly grilled pita bread is too tempting, its resilient and tender texture a sure sign of freshness. The pitas are one of several items supplied to the business from New York.

Gyro pitas are made with chicken or pork and hold fries, crunchy red onions, tomato and tzatziki with the pork, pita sauce with the chicken. Seasoned, grilled ground beef is served with the same sauce as the pork in the beeftaki pita.

The tender pita bread, nicely made fries and tzatziki make all the difference in the appetizing gyro. Caramelized, thin-sliced pork provided the bass note among the flavors, and is the reason this sandwich is a bestseller. The tzatziki added lots of garlic.

“I’m going to have lamb as soon as I find a good supply here,” Casvikes said. “Hopefully, I am going to start offering it in a month or so. The lamb I’ve tried has been a little too strong.”

Chicken souvlaki ($1.50 each on a stick skewer) was expertly grilled, the white meat tender and fragrant from a marinade.

Dolmades ($3.95 as a side dish, and also available in “platters”) were mushy, although they had a good lemony flavor.

But zucchini fritters, with an oily, golden brown crust and tender interior, did zucchinis a big favor, turning their bland flesh into something salty and lovely to eat — especially, of course, with a dab of tzatziki.

“We try to make it so that it’s like the way we eat in Greece, a little bit of everything,” Casvikes said. The portion sizes, in other words, are tailored to a meal of several items.

The yogurt comes from a supplier in New York and is strained in Portland.

It’s not fat-free, but it has a rubbery texture that is a little odd, and might mean the culture used holds exopolysaccharides, which make a Finnish kind of yogurt you can actually stretch.

House preserves or fruit sauces like quince and apple are spooned onto the yogurt for a finishing touch — or you can order it with honey in the classic style.

Baklava with walnuts is freshly made, and like everything else, modestly portioned — just two small round tubes of phyllo wrapped around walnuts soaked in syrup and flavored with cinnamon.

The mild decaf coffee makes a good drink with the baklava, and the servers are happy to make you a fresh pot. 

N.L. English is a Portland freelance writer and the author of “Chow Maine: The Best Restaurants, Cafes, Lobster Shacks and Markets on the Coast.” Visit English’s website, www.chowmaineguide.com.

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