A Visit to Gyro Junction

If you like gyro sandwiches — or just quirky street scenes — have I got an intersection for you.

Editor’s Note: This post was produced in conjunction with my friend and fellow Substacker Anne Kadet, whose excellent Café Anne newsletter examines interesting people, places, and things around New York City. For this collaboration, we explored an unusual Brooklyn phenomenon and then wrote separate articles about it. Anne’s piece, which I heartily recommend, is here (scroll down a bit to get to the gyro part); mine is below. And to all Café Anne readers who are new to Inconspicuous Consumption, welcome! — Paul

You’re probably familiar with the pita-borne sandwich known as a gyro, which usually consists of sliced lamb, beef, or chicken that’s been cooked on a vertical spit and then topped with chopped vegetables and a yogurt-based tzatziki sauce. Originally introduced to America about 60 years ago by Greek immigrants in Chicago (here’s a good backgrounder), it has since gone mainstream and become a quintessential American street food. You can even get one at Arby’s.

Along the way, the gyro has been adopted, and sometimes adapted, by various ethnic communities, including a Pakistani enclave in central Brooklyn, not far from where I live. And nowhere is this Pakistani gyro scene more vibrant than at the intersection of Foster Avenue and Coney Island Avenue, which features two similarly named gyro shops — Gyro Hut and Gyro King — that are located almost catty-corner to each other.

The Hut (which is clearly not a hut).

The King.

How close are these two businesses to each other? Here’s a video clip that provides a gyro-scopic view:

(Regarding that video: Yes, I realize the pronunciation of “gyro” is a contentious topic, but New Yorkers, including central-Brooklyn Pakistanis, tend to say, “JYE-roe,” so that’s what we’re going with here.)

With the Hut and the King within spitting distance of one another (gyros are cooked on a vertical spit, get it?), I have unofficially dubbed this intersection Gyro Junction. I figured the shops’ close proximity had the makings of an interesting rivalry, complete with long-simmering grudges and clever one-upmanship. That’s exactly the sort of eccentric NYC storyline that my friend Anne Kadet likes to explore in her great Café Anne newsletter, so I suggested that she write about it. She in turn invited me to collaborate with her on the research and reporting, with the idea that we’d each write our own take on the situation.

So Anne and I recently spent an afternoon eating gyros, interviewing customers and employees, and criss-crossing back and forth across the Gyro Junction intersection. After several hours of intense investigative reporting, we came to two primary conclusions:

1. Gyro Hut and Gyro King offer nearly identical products. The two shops are both Halal (the Muslim equivalent of Kosher) and procure their meat from the same Halal purveyor (the brilliantly named Hal&Al Meats). Both offer essentially the same veggie toppings and use essentially the same “white sauce” (watered-down mayo with spices, which is not a true tzatziki because there’s no yogurt but still gets the job done). Both griddle their pita rounds before stuffing them full of meat, and they even have the same pricing ($7 for a lamb or chicken gyro). The only real difference is that the King squirts some white sauce on the pita before griddling. which makes the pita slightly moister, but that’s a minor distinction. All in all, there’s no significant difference between the two outlets’ signature menu items (both of which are delicious).

   

   Highly sophisticated journalistic fact-finding in progress at Gyro Hut. You can just barely see that I wore a BOMP T-shirt for the occasion. (Photo by Anne Kadet)

2. While the two shops are competing for the same customer base, there’s no apparent animosity between them. Employees at both shops, when asked why their establishment was superior, basically shrugged and said (I’m paraphrasing here), “Try both, see which one you prefer.” Even the customers we spoke with didn’t express much of a preference. One guy actually said he likes both shops and decides which one to patronize based on which direction he’s driving.

Anne Kadet interviewing a Gyro Hut customer.

I confess that I was disappointed by both of these developments. I was hoping there would be more distinctions between the gyros, and was also rooting for the two outposts to be engaged in an entertainingly juicy rivalry. But while neither of those situations panned out, Gyro Junction nonetheless offers some noteworthy inconspicuous pleasures. For example:

The “9h” Logo

The Hut has two logos: a red script and a triangular “9h” icon, the latter of which appears on all of the restaurant’s signage, on the menus, on the front door, on the employees’ shirts, on the website — it’s everywhere. Anne and I didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe it had something to do with a Halal certification? With its red/green/white color motif, it reminded me a bit of an Italian version of the Freemasons’ logo.

We eventually asked the owner — a very nice man named Khan — who looked at us like we were nuts and said, “It’s ‘gh,’ for Gyro Hut.” Duh — we had totally missed that.

The Flame Factor

As you can see in that last photo, the Hut’s awning leans heavily on flame imagery. The flame motif is also prominently featured by the King, whose main awning is supplemented by this sign:

Despite the implied pyrotechnics, no flame-related cooking is evident at either restaurant. (Footnote: Gyro King had to shut down for a while in 2021 due to a fire, so it’s a bit surprising that they’d go with a flame motif.)

The Slaughter Factor

Here’s something you won’t see at Arby’s: The King has a sign informing customers that its meat is all “hand slaughtered.” (Some Muslim scholars say this is required for true Halal status; others disagree.) Personally, I think it’s good to be reminded that the meat I’m eating was once a living, breathing animal, so I’m fine with the sign.

The Confusing Pizzeria

Two doors from the Hut is a Halal pizza joint called Pizza Bite, which also serves gyros. In fact, as you can see above, their sign features an illustration of a gyro spit — with a crown!

So is the Bite affiliated with the King? Nope. Even more confusingly, a Pizza Bite staffer told me that they’re actually affiliated with the Hut! Seems like it would be both counterintuitive and counterproductive for a Hut-related establishment to use a King-ly design flourish, no?

The Very Appropriate Sign

The upper section of the building adjacent to the King is adorned with a large “got gyro?” sign. Here’s a closer look:

Given the sign’s location and color scheme, it’s obviously connected to the King. But since it doesn’t carry any explicit branding, I prefer to think of it as symbolizing all of Gyro Junction.

The Other King

Two doors down from Gyro King — adjacent to the building with the “got gyro?” sign — is a bodega called Deli King. I particularly like the endearingly misaligned “g” on their sign.

Deli King does not sell gyros, but I assumed it was connected in some way to Gyro King. Same owner, or something like that. However, a Deli King counterman told me that there is no connection. Gyro King is older (the Deli King storefront was a fried chicken restaurant as recently as three years ago), so maybe Deli King is just trying to piggyback on Gyro King’s name (which seems a bit like a palace coup). In any case, the two shops constitute a de facto King-dom.

The Weirdest Gyro of Them All

A few doors down from Deli King is a Pakistani restaurant called Lahori Chilli (yes, with two “L”s), which used to serve gyros. They no longer offer them, but their menu board behind the counter still shows what was available, including the oddly named “Student Gyro”:

Crossed out but still legible.

It’s not clear if this meant they were grinding up students into gyros (if so, were they hand slaughtered?) or if a student gyro was more like a student driver — a gyro in training, so to speak. I decided not to ask.

Everything I’ve just described is situated in and around Gyro Junction. Here’s a map showing the various attractions, numbered in the order of their appearance in this article:

Gyro Junction.

Remember, you can (and should!) learn more about all of this by checking out Anne Kadet’s gyro report, which is available here. And if you’re a Café Anne reader and want to learn more about Inconspicuous Consumption, check out my archive.

Finally, here’s an amazing kicker: As Anne and I were putting the final touches on our articles, we learned that there’s an annual National Gyro Day (because of course there is) — and it was yesterday, Sept. 1! We apparently stumbled into prime gyro season without even realizing it. I’m chalking it up to a Gyro Junction miracle.

Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.