History of Gyro Sandwich

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Gyro - An American-Greek sandwich. Most food historians generally agree the name "gyro" and the current sandwich are both recent inventions originating in New York during the early 1970s. Gyros, as we know them today, are thought to have evolved from the traditional "Doner Kebab" of Turkey.

The ingredients of a American-Greek Gyro are: A proper gyro is made with meat cut off a big cylinder of well-seasoned lamb or beef. This meat is cooked on a slowly rotating vertical spit or gyro, implying the circular spinning motion of a gyroscope. The sandwich maker slices off strips of the warm meat when the sandwich is ordered, heats pita bread on a griddle or grill, and then serves the meat on the bread, topped with the sauce which is usually garnished with lettuce and tomato. Unfortunately, most Most American gyro are made with ground meat and not sliced.

The ingredients of a Turkish Doner Kebab are: Slices of marinated lamb, mutton, beef, veal, or chicken which are stacked on a vertical spit and roasted at a vertical grill. It is served as a type of sandwich stuffed into Turkish bread, rolled into flat bread, or laid atop diced flat bread and topped with sauces.

This type of sandwich has been known, and sold on the streets, by the people of Greece, the Middle East, and Turkey for hundreds of years. Greek historians believe that the dish originated during Alexander The Great’s time, when his soldiers used their long knives to skewer meat and kept turning the meat over fires.

Gyro is probably the most often mispronounced food name. Even its fans usually do not get the pronounced correctly - whether it is mispronounced as "jee-rohs," "jai-rohs," "gee-rohs," The correct Greek pronunciation is “yee-rohs.”  The varied names have geographical origins from different peoples’ languages.
 

Comments from readers:

The preferred American English pronunciation of this word is  jr . The gyro sandwhich as Americans know it is not really a traditional/common food in Greece. It's sort of the Greek equivalent of chop suey. The word was not included in any American dictionaries until the late 1970's. The word, however, was in widespread use in New York and Chicago long before that and was always pronounced  jr. Although the pronunciation you list, yee-roh, is closer to the Greek pronunciation for the closest equivalent in Greece, and is considered acceptable because of the newness of the word, doing so is somewhat the equivalent of pronouncing the beginning of gyroscope the same way. Source: http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/G0330000.html - David Fry (7/19/08)