Gyros

Written By Alex Mylonas

Gyros

Pitogyro

Pita Gyros

Sandwich

Doner

Shawarma

Trompo

Gyros Pitogyro Pita Gyros Sandwich Doner Shawarma Trompo

Gyros: the world’s favourite Greek street food.

Gyros at Gyros Aristotelous in Thessaloniki.

What is gyros?

When you hear the word gyros, you might picture a conical pita wrap filled with meat, tzatziki and fries. What gyros really refers to, though, is the kind of meat that you sometimes find inside it. Gyros is the vertical (or sometimes horizontal), rotating spit – of stacked, seasoned meat fillets – that is grilled and carved to order.

Gyros is typically made of pork, with chicken being the main alternative. Gyros made out of beef, lamb, or minced meat is sometimes also often referred to as döner (ντονέρ) in Greece. This gives us a little glimpse as to the history of gyros, and helps us to create a useful distinction between gyros and döner – both of which you’ll read more about below.

Souvlakination’s home-made pita gyros.

The way pita gyros was served in much of Greece from the ‘70s.

Gyros Etymology

Gyros (γύρος) comes from the Greek word gyra (γύρα), meaning ‘to turn’. Gyros is pronounced yir-oz (like the word year said quickly + oz), and the plural is gyroi (pronounced yiri).

As the name suggests, gyros is grilled on a (vertical) rotisserie spit. Traditionally, charcoal would have been used although gas and electric broilers are now standard.

It is carved thinly to order, traditionally with a long knife, and served as a portion or in a pita. 

Preparation of Gyros

Before it’s placed on the spit, the meat is thinly sliced and usually marinated and/or seasoned with a range of ingredients like salt, pepper, paprika, chilli, oregano, thyme, garlic, mustard, oil, lemon and savoury, to name a few possible options.

It’s then layered on a spit (souvla) and pressed down as compactly as possible to maximise juiciness and hold it together as it’s cooked and carved.

Gyroi at Gyradiko in Toumpa, Thessaloniki.

How Is Gyros served?

A portion of gyros will typically be served with sliced onions (often with parsley), sliced tomatoes, and a condiment (like tzatziki or mustard). Nowadays, fries will also popularly feature.

A pita gyros (a pita of gyros, the thing that looks like a conical/cylindrical wrap) is served in different ways depending on where you are based in Greece.

Gyros throughout Greece: Thessaloniki & Beyond

Let’s start in Thessaloniki, where gyros is arguably most adored (perhaps given Thessaloniki’s proximity to Asia Minor, from which Greek refugees brought the practice). There, a pita gyros will also be referred to as a sandwich (or simply gyros in pita), and will be served with sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, mustard and (nowadays) ketchup, plus of course fries. If you want tzatziki in your pita in Thessaloniki, you’ll likely need to specify.

Elsewhere in Greece, a pita gyros will most commonly be served with the essential sliced tomatoes and onions, plus tzatziki and fries (the last two of which began to be popularly added to the pita in the 1990s). At first, in the 1950s and 60s, condiments weren’t as popular, although there are accounts of tzatziki being added to the pita after the 1970s. There were certainly no fries. Here, the Mallioras brothers, who manufacture barbecue grills in Greece and run a YouTube channel called Grill Philosophy, speak about how their father would traditionally serve pita gyros with only tzatziki, onions and tomatoes in his ouzeri. That would have been at the time when the tradition of pork gyros took hold after the Greek junta banned minced meat döner, i.e. the 1970s-80s (more on that below). Tomato/red salsa is also popularly added in Corfu, and was the default condiment of a pita in Athens from the 1950s (albeit before gyros really took hold).

In northern Greece, you’ll find mustard being added by default. Nonetheless, it’s not wrong to say (without having data) that tzatziki now tends to be the most popular option overall in Greece, hence the stereotype. There are, of course, other popular alternatives: yoghurt (especially popular in Crete), sauce giaourtiou (yoghurt mixed with other ingredients like mustard, mayonnaise, honey, etc.), mustard sauce, tyrokafteri (spicy feta dip), and many other options that will vary based on where in Greece you are and the gyradiko/souvlatzidiko you are in.

Gyros portion (with onions) at Diavasi in Thessaloniki.

Pita gyros with tzatziki at To Elliniko in Athens.

Gyros Terminology

Although it’s confusing, many Athenians might also call a pita of gyro a ‘souvlaki with gyro’. This is because the word souvlaki is also used to refer to the pita, or wrap (tylichto) itself, in Athens. Athenians and Greeks outside of Thessaloniki may also literally call it a tylichto (which means wrap). Whereas in Thessaloniki, souvlaki ONLY refers to the skewer. You can read more about what souvlaki means and the regional terminologies here.

Many Greeks also commonly use the term pitogyro, which is a compound word or variation of pita gyros. Some Greeks may use pitogyro to refer to any pita, no matter what the filling – in the same way that Athenians do with souvlaki. If you find that super confusing, you’re not alone! There is no one rule, although the words do all still carry a meaning.

Which Meats a used for gyros?

Gyros is made of pork in Greece, with the alternative being chicken. Other variations exist, such as beef (moschari), lamb (arni) and mutton (provatina). When döner first arrived in Greece, it was typically made of minced meat. Although minced meat is used much less often, it’s still often acknowledged as döner (or gyros-döner) among Greeks (ντονέρ).

In terms of cuts, gyradika (gyros joints) tend to go for balance: either through using a balanced cut like neck, or using a mixture of a meatier cut like shoulder or leg and a fattier cut like belly to get the right balance of meat and fat. The fat provides flavour.

Gyros History

In 1922-23, a population exchange took place between Greece and what was becoming the nation state of Turkey. Greeks from Constantinople and Smyrna (Istanbul and Izmir) brought with them culinary practices that were shared around between ethnic groups in Asia Minor, most notably the döner kebab. Around this time, Greeks made döner using minced meat, usually using mutton, something that Misak Anispikian confirms, whose grandfather opened To Aigyptiakon in 1924, one of the first ever shops to be serving döner in Athens.

Traditionally, döner is associated with lamb that is marinated and layered with fat on a vertical spit, and understood to be the 19th Century iteration of what many Turks call çag kebab (horizontal spit), which researchers say dates it back further to the 16th Century. As Marina Petridou and Tasos Brekoulakis point out in their most recent work (see Further Reading below), the first recorded instance of döner cooked vertically is in Smyrna in 1842. Given evidence of Ottoman officials eating döner kebab throughout the empire, they also point out that döner might have technically arrived in modern-day Greece at least 2 centuries before the 20th Century population exchange, in those administrative circles at least.

Gyros at To Aigyptiakon – the first souvlatzidiko in Greece. At the time that this photo is taken in the 1960s, they would have used mutton and called it döner. Pork gyros began to gain popularity from 1967.

Are gyros and doner the same thing, then?

After the Second World War, a new widespread trend was taking hold in towns and cities across Greece: souvlakia. Isaak Meraklidis – who opened the first souvlatzidiko in 20th Century Greece and set in motion a trend that would come to define Greek street food – went into partnership with his employees and filled Monastiraki in Athens with joints selling kebab. By the 1950s, souvlakia, or kalamakia, were being sold by street vendors in Athens as the trend began spreading throughout Greece. It was within that context and infrastructure of street vendors, new souvlatzidika, and tavernes across Greece adopting these trends, that gyros was able to take hold and become another popular choice in the burgeoning street food landscape. Many tavernes and grills began adding these new streetfood hits to their menus, once example being Express in Thessaloniki (pictured above).

Greeks themselves initially used the word döner to describe the dish brought over by the Greek refugees from Asia Minor, and their version was based on a minced meat recipe. All of that changed in 1967 when a law imposed by the military Junta in Greece outlawed the use of minced meat and, with that, döner (in the form that it was then known).

Some note a high number of hospitalisations associated with the consumption of minced meat at the time, but others argue the law was imposed to promote the use of pork meat. Whatever the reason, this paved the way for the popularisation of gyros. Minced meat döner was replaced with pork, and its name Hellenised to gyros.

Turks will also be the first to tell you that döner is made with lamb or beef + lamb (chicken also the alternative in Turkey), and Greeks that gyros is made with pork, making a clear and useful, albeit nuanced, contemporary distinction between gyros and döner.

Chicken gyros, with three pork gyroi behind.

Gyros Around the World

As well as gyros and döner, iterations exist throughout the world, the names of which all mean the same thing: spinning. While the Arabs take pride in their shawarma, the Mexicans named their adaptation of the dish trompo (or tacos Al Pastor, as the dish is known). 

Like many ethnic foods, Greek street food isn’t immune to bastardisation in the Western world. Many fast food vendors and supermarkets are using the term to describe anything from a tortilla wrap with boiled chicken to a pita filled with anything, without any gyros in sight. This is likely the result of a misconception and misunderstanding of what gyros really is.

If you only remember one thing, may it be this: if the meat isn’t carved from a rotating spit of layered meat, it isn’t actually gyros.

Further reading

 
Alex Mylonas https://souvlakination.com
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