"If you look at every gyro, everybody have the same way, you know what I mean?" says Cizar Dohuky, the owner of Cizar's Mediterranean Grill in East Nashville. Well, not all gyros are the same, he says. His are "fresher."
In a 1.2-mile stretch of Gallatin Pike, from the southernmost boundary of Eastland running north to Trinity Lane, there are five gyro restaurants. It is the highest concentration of fast-service Mediterranean cuisine in Nashville, and each restaurant owner, not just Dohuky, says what sets them apart is that their gyros are "fresher."
But the difference is far from one restaurant being fresher than another. Only two of the five owners are from the same country, and they're so different that they can't even form a consensus on how to say "gyro," let alone agree on the finer points of making it.
The gyro has a basic formula: roasted lamb (or lamb and beef) and vegetables are packed into a pita and dribbled with cucumber sauce. "Gyro" is a Greek word for a sandwich invented in Chicago by Greek-Americans during the '60s, which reached Nashville as recently as the late '70s (when a Hickory Hollow food-court stand offered them). But from one seed has sprung the tree of gyro.
At the northern boundary of East Nashville's Gyro Alley, at 2804 Gallatin Pike, is Wael Beskales' Chicago Style Gyros. The 31-year-old bought his franchise six months ago, but the restaurant has been open at the same location for 15 years, making it the oldest "year-oh" shop, he says, on the strip. He's worked for the chain eight years now between the Murfreesboro and Dickerson Pike shops, after immigrating from Egypt, where he grew up eating shawarma.
Beskales is proud of his homemade cucumber and ranch sauces, and he's proud of his hospitality. At his last shop, he says, he knew 90 percent of his customers' names.
"Eric, how are you?" he calls from our booth. Eric is a young white guy with a beard. They hug.
"How many times a week?" Eric asks.
"Maybe four, five?" Beskales says. "He brings his friends," he adds when he sits back down.
Beskales' gyro starts with his silky ranch up front, which coats the meat he packs into a deep vertical pocket. It is the biggest of all the gyros I will try. The second bite balances with tomato, lettuce and a light amount of onion. The meat is thin and peppery.
When asked why he thinks there's such a concentration of gyro shops in East Nashville, he says, "People see we have good business, they try to copy it."
Driving south on Gallatin, we come to Ali's Grill and Creations, inside Jerry's Market across from the old Nashville Auto Diesel College, at 1401 Gallatin. Nidal "Ali" Naser is 52, "but I look 45," he says with a wink. He has a long, angular face with the sunken cheeks of someone who works long hours. He left the Palestinian region 28 years ago because of the politics, and to go to college.
"There was no freedom for us Palestinians to have our own opinion or to advance or to become somebody," he says.
Naser's "jy-roe" is so different that it's more street food fusion than it is Mediterranean cuisine. It started with his contention that everyone in East Nashville was making the same traditional gyro.
"I thought, I want more muscles," he says. So he traded the pita for a tortilla, then toasted it and added a homemade Alfredo sauce with a dollop of marinara. "It was a 'wow,' " he says, and he now sells an average of 35 to 40 a day.
"I can go and get a gyro from anyplace," Naser says, "but that place right there, there's a uniqueness."
Naser's gyro has onions and green peppers in it. But you'd be hard-pressed to notice them: The sandwich is meat-forward, with a crispy shell and the smooth cream backbone of Alfredo. It's a sandwich for carnivores, and the meat, seasoned with allspice, is robust and juicy.
Drive farther south, and you'll hit East Nashville's gyro epicenter, with Steak & Pizza and Cizar's Mediterranean Grill eying each other across Gallatin like Montagues and Capulets.
Steak & Pizza's owner declined to speak, but Ali, an employee, was game. Both are Lebanese, and their "guy-roe" pitas come stuffed with vinegary yellow rice, a full meal even without a side of french fries. The sandwich has a strong current of parsley, and Ali throws in jalapeños for kick. The cucumber sauce, infused with mint, cools the burn.
Across the street, at 1101 Gallatin, Cizar Dohuky, 30, has owned the Mediterranean Grill for the past four months. He purchased it from another Kurdish man whose demeanor just wasn't suited to the restaurant life. Cizar is suited for it: young, hungry and ambitious, he drafted his brother Mohammad, 21, and sister Sylor, 15, to help him run it.
"What I try to bring here is my whole cultural thing," Dohuky says. "My mom teach us how to cook, [to] feed us. Everything is from her."
After 17 years in the U.S., his "jy-roe" is cucumber- and feta-forward. And then those tomatoes. Small for flavor, they provide a sweet wash over a milder meat. It finishes with parsley and the light bite of red onion.
"Other people come to me, they say, 'What do you think about the other people over here?' " Dohuky says. "Honestly, I hope they do the same thing I'm doing. I hope they succeed."
He says the gyro owners don't talk shit about each other. But when Dohuky is told of other places talking shit, "I know this [very bad word] right here," he says, nodding south toward the last restaurant. "Let him talk about me. That makes me happy, because in the back of his head, he's thinking about me."
Dohuky was referring to brothers Zana and Dana Faraj, who own King Solomon Gyros at the corner of Eastland and Gallatin. It's an unmistakable white-and-orange building across from Kroger. The pair bought it in September 2012, and Zana, 28, says that in 2013 business was up 40 percent.
"It didn't happen just because it happened," Zana says.
Zana's got swagger, that me-versus-the-world drive of a young entrepreneur. It's in his manicured beard and warm brown eyes, and in the slight roll of R's that hints at his Kurdish roots. Like Cizar, Zana learned to cook from his mother. Then he took a culinary arts course during a five-year penitentiary stint for aggravated robbery and learned even more.
"I see food, the vegetables," he says. "I can already visualize it before I start, what I'm going to do to it."
If you pull into King Solomon, you might as well turn your engine off, because, after all, his "jy-roes" are "fresher." Expect a wait as Zana toasts the pitas to order. His sandwich has thick chunks of tomato and the best mix of vegetables, and his cucumber sauce, bolstered with yogurt for taste, is worth the trip alone. And then there's the eye-watering crunch of raw onions and the warm, chewy pita.
"They don't cook like me," Zana says. "They don't have nothing on me." And it's true: In East Nashville, all the gyro restaurants are as different as their owners. They all may be "fresher," but there's more than one way to differentiate yourself with a pita.
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