Smyrneiko Style is a style label rather than a single recipe. It marks Smyrna-style preparations carried into Greek cooking by Asia Minor Greeks, the communities with roots in Smyrna on the Anatolian coast. When a dish is described as smyrneiko, the term is doing the work of a provenance tag: it signals a particular seasoning sensibility brought from that region, most recognizably a fondness for cumin and a warmer, more aromatic spicing than plainer mainland Greek cooking tends toward. The interesting thing about the label is that it travels across dishes; it is a way of cooking, applied to whatever the dish happens to be.
Because this is a style and not a fixed assembly, what to look for is consistency of character rather than a set build order. The marker is the spicing. A preparation done in smyrneiko style should carry that Asia Minor warmth clearly, the cumin and aromatic notes integrated into the meat or the sauce rather than dusted on at the end, so the seasoning reads as part of the dish's structure. Good execution is spicing that is present and balanced, distinct from a plainer version of the same dish without tipping into harshness. Sloppy execution is either a version that claims the name but tastes indistinguishable from a generic preparation, where the style has been lost, or one that overcorrects with so much cumin that it goes bitter and one-note. The label sets an expectation; meeting it means the Smyrna character is legible and controlled.
Where this matters most is as a modifier on specific dishes. The clearest carrier of smyrneiko style is the cumin-and-tomato meatball tradition, the lineage that runs into soutzoukakia, where the Asia Minor spicing is the whole identity of the plate; that dish stands on its own rather than being crowded in here. The broader spit-roasted street tradition the Asia Minor influence also touched, such as kokoretsi and kontosouvli, likewise deserves its own article. What smyrneiko style names, precisely, is the seasoning inheritance itself: a Smyrna-rooted way of spicing that you judge by whether the dish wearing the label actually tastes of where the name says it comes from.