Talk:Souvlaki

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I HUNGER!! I NEED THIS or i will eat an entire rain forest!

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The image in this article is so wrong. Not representative of a typical Souvlaki. pinikas 17:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Contacting my Greek friend for a better one :) Aaron Lawrence 06:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Merging

Who wanted to merge this with gyros!?!? Souvlaki and gyros are not the same thing, they are prepared in a different manner! -Alexius Comnenus

I did. I didn't know they aren't the same, since the picture is a gyro here, and the lead paragraph in Gyros says they souvlaki are a different name for gyros. You seem to be Greek (by your name), so I guess you should know better than I. You say the merge suggestion should be removed then? | AndonicO ^{Talk · Sign Here} 20:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Souvlaki is meat on a skewer, where as Gyros is when the meat is cut off a large rotating spit. In both cases the meat can be put in a roll or pita bread.

Meat on a skewer is called kalamaki throughout Greece, with the sole exception of Thessaloniki. Gyros is the meat on the large vertical spit, as the previous commenter said. Souvlaki is the name for the whole concoction, pita, condiments and meat (either in the form of kalamaki or gyros). When you go to a "souvlatzidiko" (place that sells souvlakia) you can ask for "souvlaki with gyros" or "souvlaki with kalamaki". This is the standard naming in Greece. In Thessaloniki they call the souvlaki sandwitch. So if you happen to be there, ask for a "sandwitch with gyros" or a "sandwitch with souvlaki". For any other greek town, stick with the standard terminology.--[[Special:Contributions/77.49.61.207|77.49.61.207]] ([[User talk:77.49.61.207|talk]]) 01:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

@77.49.61.207
You have this wrong, kalamaki and calling anything you put in a pita souvlaki is Athens only. In fact, the name kalamaki originated in the athenian slang of the 1950's. Even in Piraeus, traditionalists will still use the proper forms. This, however, does not stop athenians from considering their own idiom as "normal", hence the misunderstanding. 37.6.197.23 (talk) 13:23, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

The merged articles are the least helpful of almost any here. I wish i knew how to separate them. The national snack food of a country with a population of 10 million souls has been reduced to nonsense.Hotspury (talk) 22:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I look at this article with so much sadness. it tells us so little about so little, and in a page format that is meaninglessHotspury (talk) 14:33, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

No need to be so melancholic about it. If is causing you that much grief you might want to have a go at improving it...Georgeg (talk)

but where on earth would I start. I don't know sufficient about the subject! Its just that a subject which is so important to a culture, has really been reduced to meaningless drivel. I know I sound melancholic, but it bothers me!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hotspury (talk • contribs) 13:23, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

right so, the whole premise of this article is wrong, it is akin to saying garlic bread is called pizza because you eat it in a restaurant that serves pizza. gyros is not souvlaki in the sense of a wikipedia entry. there are debates about the authenticity of putting french fries inside the pitta, but the mention of chicken( a completely untraditional ingredient) goes unchallenged. i know i should do something about this, but as i said before, where to start!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hotspury (talk • contribs) 02:11, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, there seems to be some confusion even among Greeks on this matter. During my studies in Chania, Crete in the mid-to-late '90s, I found that, when I asked for souvlaki, they served me gyros; when I asked about it, they told me that I should have told them I wanted a kalamaki. Even more curiously, most souvlaki joints there made what is widely accepted as souvlaki merely by sticking a skewer in the meat they used for gyros and cutting it in a different manner. It took quite some time for the distinction between souvlaki and gyros to reach that town; until around 1998 or thereabouts, very few places distinguished between souvlaki and gyros. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 14:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Etymology fubar

Greek is older than Latin; Greek did not derive souvla from subula; they are cognate languages, both derived from Indo-European, not from each other.

This "derivation" is Western European bias.

167.115.255.20 16:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)LINKBook

True, Greek literature goes back further than Latin. But Byzantine Greek did borrow some Latin words, especially in areas such as law; just as modern Greek borrows some Italian words (like "pastitzio"). ---Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 11:00, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I have read somewhere that the "souvlaki" was invented by Achilles on the plains of Troy.{Can anyone help me with this source?} The Greeks survived by hunting and then cooking the animals, lamb, pork, beef, etc. on a spit. From there derived the souvlaki and over the centuries the shish kebab and kebab has become a synonym for souvlaki. Lets not forget that Greece/Greeks have always been the bridge between east and west. If you read Turkish history, they adopted Persian culture and cuisine while they travelled from Asia through to what is now modern Turkey. The Ottomans did not invade the Byzantine Empire until 1453AD. Alexander the Great had already spread Greek language, cuisine, (which intermingled with Persian)and culture through the East as far as India by his death in 323BC.115.131.36.182 (talk) 08:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

No french fries in "traditional" version

Hi: I have removed french fries from the list of standard ingredients since they are not part of the "pure" dish and are rather a recent addition, esp. to be found in restaurants that serve tourists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.7.3.7 (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Not entirely true, the few chips or french fries as you people accross the atlantic call them, have been added to a greek souvlaki pita for some time now. Just because there are some places that don't do this, doesn't mean there is anything intrinsically wrong with adding a few chips. In greek meals as some will be well aware, eating bread and potato together is commonplace.Hotspury (talk) 10:01, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Seconded. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

shish

shish is turkish şiş, means needle,also it seems like a greek theft of culture like baklava,lokum etc. ,because, şiş kebap and souvlaki are similar,only a difference that şiş kebap is only from meat,also i heard a tale that the name of grill that souvlaki cooked in called mangali by greeks, which is turkish mangal (etymologically arabian menkâl) Girayhan (talk) 22:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

These dishes well predate modern Greek and Turkish borders. They have different names in the two countries, and are the same dish. They weren't stolen, modern Greece and Turkey weren't around when the recipes started to spread. - Mike "Pomax" Kamermans, February 2011

Exactly. I highly recommend keeping petty nationalism out of Wikipedia. Those who can't accept this policy are welcome to leave. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 20:53, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Both are true. There are certainly references to this sort of food in Homer; less so in later and Hellenistic literature. On the other hand, dishes of the shashlik type are found all over Turkic-speaking Central Asia, the Ottoman Turks did not borrow them from the Greeks. Whether the Greek (and in particular the Cypriot) version descends from the ancient Greek tradition or from the Turkish shish kebap is a moot point, and probably unanswerable. The use of pork is not decisive: in Spain too there are pork kebabs, which were clearly borrowed from the Moors but then adapted to a Christian context. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 12:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Lamb's meat in souvlaki?

While I do know that Islamic countries make their equivalent of the souvlaki using lamb's meat, I am a bit puzzled to see the reference that souvlaki has traditionally been made from lamb's meat, because I've never encountered it; in all my 35 years, I've only known souvlaki from pork meat - only in later times, when healthier foods became more fashionable, have I seen souvlaki made from chicken or veal. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 14:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I've removed the claim that says that souvlaki is "traditionally" made from lamb's meat. There is no citation to support it, plus all recipes out there propose pork meat instead, which is consistent with my experience - I've never seen anyone make souvlaki from lamb's meat in Greece. Ever. Neither have my parents. Or my grandparents. Moderatelyaverage (talk) 16:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

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Etymology

User:Deadwords, you recently deleted—twice—a well-sourced etymology of the word 'souvlaki'. You said: "Citation redirects to Wikipedia page as source making no mention of unsupported claim." which is a bizarre claim. The citation does not redirect to a Wikipedia page. The two sources are the two best modern Greek dictionaries—the Babiniotis and the Andriotis dictionaries. Indeed, there is a Wikipedia article about the Babiniotis dictionary, and one about its author. What "stronger sources" do you have in mind. As for "one which definitively excludes Ancient Greek as an origin would be ideal", that is a strange request, as though for some reason you think that "by default", modern Greek words come from Ancient Greek: many do, many don't. By the way, for readers' convenience, I have added a direct link to the Andriotis dictionary on line. But most sources are not available on line, and there is no requirement to cite on-line sources. --Macrakis (talk) 13:15, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

History section needs work

The history section is weak. It interprets primary sources tendentiously, and cites dictionaries which don't actually support the claims being made. Yes, Aristophanes talks of using obeliskos (spits), but he specifically mentions skewering thrushes (little birds), not chunks of meat. One of these days, I'll check out the other ancient sources, and see if they're any more specific. As for Liddell and Scott defining ὀβελίσκος and ὀβελός as spits, that doesn't tell us how they were used. Of course, it's plausible that they were used for chunks of meat, but the source doesn't support that. --Macrakis (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, I have now looked over the ancient sources. They all mention the word obeliskos (skewer), but none of them does so in a context which clarifies how the obeliskos was used. It is certainly plausible that they were used for chunks of meat, but they might have been used for birds (as is explicit in Acharnians 1007) or who knows what else. The Homer passage does mention cutting meat and putting it on a spit, so I have left it in, but it is just as likely that the pieces of meat were big as that they were small, so it is WP:OR to call that 'kebab-like'. --Macrakis (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

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Doner Kebab is a Turkish-Ottoman dish. If there are any variants they fundamentally derive from this fact.

Why does the See also section refer to * Döner kebab, a Turkish-Ottoman dish, as a "Turkish version of Greek gyro", when the Greek version of the dish and its etymology derives from the Ottoman Döner kebab? Also see page: Döner kebab and where it also mentions a known fact that "the vertical rotisserie was invented in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, and doner kebab inspired similar dishes such as the Arab shawarma, Greek gyros, and Mexican al pastor."", and in "the Ottoman Empire at least as far back as the 17th century, stacks of seasoned sliced meat were cooked on a horizontal rotisserie, similar to the cağ kebab. The vertical rotisserie was introduced no later than the mid-19th century. (and) the town of Bursa, in modern-day Turkey, is often considered the birthplace of the vertically-roasted döner kebab."... whereas when it comes to its use and introduction to other countries, "döner kebab, and its derivatives shawarma and gyros, served in a sandwich, came to world-wide prominence in the mid to late 20th century" and the derivatives themselves are exactly just that: derivatives...

I'm also thinking it's a possibility that including: "Doner kebab – Turkish version of Greek gyro Gyro (food) – Greek version of Turkish doner kebab" might just be an innocent but unnecessary attempt to make this page neutral?

Whatever it is, it's just incorrect and misleading. Nargothronde (talk) 00:53, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

References

history

where was it founded, when, how, who made it can you reply with a more detailed but short summary — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:704D:A200:98D0:1AED:8236:B3C6 (talk) 02:30, 4 November 2020 (UTC)