Gyro History Unfolds

[Holly Moore]

Today's NY Times Dining section has an article on the History of Gyro - not really gyros but the ground and force formed versions found in most US places selling Gyros.

My first Gyro was a food eureka moment. With apologies to Bram Stoker, love at first bite. It was in Chicago, Greektown, a place called Dianna's Grocery. Way back when, in the late 60's, when Dianna's was still just a grocery store with a dining room in the back, In the grocery store section was a gyro broiler/roaster. On it, layers of beef and lamb. Real muscle, not the junk that passes nowadays.

It was incredible. My first Greek food at my first Greek restaurant (other than North Jersey diners). In a way the Gyro was like barbecue - caramelized charred ends, with tender, juicy meat from the inside. Warm from being sliced to order, with the chilled whatever served with it. I became a regular. Discovered saganaki and retsina there too. Alas, success brings expansion. Dianna's moved and became a restaurant. The food never tasted as good.

All of which is why I never order the lackluster pretender that Greek restaurants lazily sell nowadays and, like the NY Times, call Gyro.

[sazji]

All the forms it takes is really interesting. When I lived in Greece in the 1970s, the most common gyros was made from ground meat, with some thin slices between to hold it all together. It was mystery meat but usually good. As far as I know it was usually a mixture of meats but not much lamb. There were also places that did the stacked slices, usually of pork. If Turkey is any model for comparison, the sliced version is older. The ground version was finally banned in Greece because it was such a convenient way to get rid of that bit of questionable meat you couldn't sell otherwise.

When I came back to the US, the Gyros thing was just taking off. Some were good, some were awful, what one friend of mine calls "Greek Spam." And it was all ground, so we know which model they took!

What really struck me in the US was how they served it. In Greece at the time, if you got gyros (or souvlaki for that matter) you got it wrapped in a pita that was about 4-5 inches wide at the most, with some onions, tomato, a dab of yogurt (not tzatziki), salt and a sprinkling of oregano. Some places added a bit of red pepper, and up north it was more common to add some fried potatoes as it is in Turkey as well. If you were having it for dinner, you'd rarely get just one. Two or even three was the norm.

In the US, they basically turned it into a monstrous bread-shelled taco. Full of lettuce (Huh??!), huge amounts of meat, and great globs of this "tadziki" sauce that was made from sour cream, pickles (? I could never quite figure it out) and preservatives. It was huge and came with a fork because there was no way to eat it without one. Also, they seem to be unable to wait for it to cook normally, so many just usually hack it off the roll raw and then fry it on a griddle. On the video included in the article, there is a server doing this. Disgusting!

In Greece now, the souvlaki and gyros joints have a big array of gloopy sauces to choose from, and the size has doubled to nearly match the American one. but at least they don't stuff it full of iceberg lettuce.

Edited July 17, 2009 by sazji (log)

[avibenshi]

Where I live two versions exist: the cheep one, made of turkey meet with lamb fat stacked between the layers to give it a bit of the lamb flavour, and the original Turkish version, with lamb meet and pistacios, served with a bit of yogurt sauce.