Gyros

• 1. Introduction

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  Gyros is a Greek dish of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie, shaved into thin slices and wrapped in pita bread. It is a staple street meal in Greece and Cyprus, and it is sold far beyond them. Yet the name on the menu has a curious past. For a time Greece called this food by a Turkish word, and somebody decided that had to change. Why does one dish carry so many names? Who first stacked meat on a spit and sliced it as it cooked? And how did a recipe with Ottoman roots become an American fast food?

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• 2. A Borrowed Name

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  Behind the Greek word γύρος sits the Turkish döner, which comes from the verb dönmek. Gyros is a calque of that word, a loan translation that carries the Turkish idea into Greek instead of copying its sound. Greece once used the Turkish name itself, spelled ντονέρ in Greek letters.

  That spelling drew criticism in Greece precisely because the word was Turkish, and gyros was proposed as its replacement. By at least 1970, gyro or gyros was already in use in American English. Along with the Greek γύρος, it pushed aside the term doner kebab for the Greek version of the dish. Even so, some Greek restaurants in the United States kept using both names for the same food during the 1970s.

  In Greek, gyros is a nominative singular noun. English speakers often hear the final s as a plural ending, and that habit produced the singular back-formation gyro. Some English speakers also say the word like the related English word gyro, which is spelled the same way but pronounced differently. Inside Greece, the vocabulary grows stranger still, because the same word can point to different things from one city to the next.

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• 3. Souvlaki Confusion

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  In Athens and other parts of southern Greece, the skewered meat that other regions call souvlaki goes by the name kalamaki. Souvlaki, in turn, becomes a general word for gyros and similar dishes. The same word therefore shifts its target depending on where it is spoken.

  Thessaloniki draws the line in yet another place. There, gyros refers only to the meat on the spit. What English speakers call a gyros wrap is known as a sandwich, written σάντουιτς in Greek letters. Where the spit itself first appeared is a separate question.

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• 4. The Road From Bursa

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  The city of Bursa, in the Ottoman Empire, gave the world the idea in the 19th century. Cooks there developed the method of grilling a vertical spit of stacked meat and slicing it off as it cooked. The technique reached Greece after the 1922-23 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, when Greeks from Asia Minor brought their own variation with them.

  Following World War II, gyros made with lamb was already present in Athens. It was most likely introduced by immigrants from Anatolia and the Middle East. The Greek version, normally made with pork and served with tzatziki, became known as gyros. That pork-and-tzatziki version was the one that would soon appear in American cities.

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• 5. Chicago Claimants

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  By 1970, gyros wraps were a popular fast food in Athens, Chicago and New York City. Vertical rotisseries had started to be mass-produced in the United States by Gyros Inc. of Chicago. The stacks of meat on those machines, however, were still shaped by hand.

  Several people in the Chicago area, all of Greek descent, claim to have introduced the first mass-produced gyros to the United States in the early 1970s. One of them, Peter Parthenis, has said the idea of a mass-produced gyro was first conceived by John and Margaret Garlic.

  John Garlic was a Jewish car salesman. He later ran a restaurant that featured live dolphins. The dish did not stop at the American border, and the next cook in this story worked farther north.

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• 6. Cousins Abroad

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  Peter Gamoulakos, originally from Greece, started selling Greek gyros in the 1970s from his restaurant off the Bedford Highway in Halifax. His version was a pita stuffed with grilled lamb and tzatziki. From that start came the Halifax donair, a Canadian dish based on the Greek gyros.

  The Arab shawarma, the Canadian donair and the Mexican al pastor are all relatives of gyros. Each one derives from the Turkish doner kebab. That single ancestor ties together dishes from Arab, Canadian and Mexican kitchens. Which meat goes onto the spit, however, changes from country to country.

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• 7. The Turning Cone

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  Pork is the normal choice for gyros in Greece, and chicken is also common there. Lamb or beef turns up more rarely. Typical American mass-produced gyros use finely ground beef mixed with lamb.

  Cumin, oregano, thyme and rosemary are among the spices that may flavor hand-made gyros. The cook starts by cutting the meat into thin, flat slices that are roughly round. These are stacked on a spit and seasoned, with fat trimmings usually layered in between.

  An inverted cone is the shape the stacked meat takes on a tall vertical rotisserie. The rotisserie turns slowly in front of a heat source or broiler. Juices running off the upper parts baste the lower parts as the cone cooks. When the outside is done, it is sliced vertically into thin, crisp shavings.

  Three adjustments set the pace of the roasting: the intensity of the heat, the distance between heat and meat, and the speed of the spit's rotation. By changing them, the cook can match the rate at which customers are eating. What happens once the shavings leave the cone shows Greece's own habits.

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• 8. The Greek Wrap

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  In Greece, the pita is customarily oiled and lightly grilled before it is filled. The shavings are rolled up inside it with sliced tomatoes, chopped onions and fried potatoes. Tzatziki sometimes goes on top. In northern Greece, ketchup or mustard sometimes takes its place.

  The fried potatoes are worth noticing the next time a gyros reaches a table anywhere, because in the Greek version they are rolled inside the wrap itself.

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