Good Gyros

[Withnail42]

Is there any where in the city that makes a really good homemade gyro?(beef, lamb, chicken, doesn't matter) All I seem to come across are the prefab strips of meat void of any character and taste.

Thanks.

[Pan]

You could try Jerusalem Restaurant on Broadway between 103rd and 104th, but it'll be called shawarma. I've found their food very reliable and good. Another place you can try, also for shawarma, is Azuri Cafe, 51st St. and 10th Av.

[anrf18]

Greek Village - 28th and 7th Avenue makes very good gyros and has a great avgolemono soup..

[itryalot]

I am hoping still to get some names - gyros (not processed meat, but slices stacked) and souvlaki. Grab and go would be best.

[Withnail42]

Point of clarification when I meant prefab I was referring to the gyro meat that comes frozen like bacon strips. It's precooked and then just thawed and heated.

[thew]

i dont know of any places that do that

[Piso]

I know exactly what you are talking about. The meat is already cooked. Thinly sliced and frozen. Then they throw them on the grill. The brand is Grecian. Some diners in Jersey use that .

[guttergourmet]

Karavas (2 locations in the Village) are the best but I hate to tell you that all gyros are "pre-fab". http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/din...

[KTinNYC]

all gyros are "pre-fab".

Not true. There are places that "stack" layers of meat on the rotisserie themselves instead of using the pre-formed gyro meat found at most places.

[guttergourmet]

Please identify them and let's not confuse gyros woth shwarma.

[KTinNYC]

I say they are pretty much synonymous, obviously you diasagree.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/428395

[guttergourmet]

People think of shawarmas as being similar to gyros (from Greece), this is not true: the Gyro usually has different ingredients inside the sandwich. Gyro meat is often quite different, both in its spices and insofar as gyro meat is a mixture of beef and lamb while shawarma is typically never beef and occasionally only lamb.

[thew]

what is it when it isn't the occasional lamb nor the never beef?

[KTinNYC]

Is a hot dog a hot dog if it's a combination of beef and pork? All pork, pork and chicken? Heavily spiced? Lightly spiced? A rose by any other name...

But we can agree that not all gyros are pre-fab, right?

[michele cindy]

While it may be different in Greece and the Mid-east, I find in the NYC metro area, a "gyro" is usually considered to be more of a compressed minced meat, and a shawarma is usually more in it's original form, stacked, layered and not as minced. Both are cooked the same way on a vertical rotiserrie. A a souvlaki here is cubes of meat on a skewer and grilled.
For a decent cheap schwarma, I really like Mamoun's on Macdougal.

[thew]

homemade?

[dcesaria]

i like the Rafiqi street carts believe it or not...

[KTinNYC]

They use the same prefab stuff everyone else uses.

[KTinNYC]

Kebab Garden does a good job of making there own gyros.

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Kebab Garden
128 1st Ave, New York, NY 10009

[Pan]

No they don't, unless they've improved drastically since I gave them a chance or two shortly after they opened. Very nice people, but horribly dry meat. I thought their kebabs (gyros) were terrible.