Doner kebab döner or döner kebap, is a Turkish dish made of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie, normally lamb but also a mixture of veal or beef with these, or sometimes chicken. The dish is also widely known by its Arabic name "shawarma" (from Turkish çevirme) or the Greek name "gyros".
The sliced meat of a Doner kebab may be served wrapped in a flatbread such as lavash or pita or as a sandwich instead of being served on a plate. It is a common fast food item not only in Turkey but also in the Middle East, Europe and Australia. Seasoned meat in the shape of an inverted cone is turned slowly against a vertical rotisserie, then sliced vertically into thin, crisp shavings. On the sandwich version, the meat is generally served with tomato, onion with sumac, pickled cucumber and chili.
The name gyro comes from Greek γύρος ("turn"), a calque of the Turkish döner a name which was used as well as ντονέρ
While the Greek word gyro and the Arabic shawarma are often used in the Americas, in the UK, the Turkish word döner is almost universal with few exceptions, although (unlike in Germany where it is normally seen spelled döner) it is normally spelled without the umlaut over the "o" as doner.
The word shawarma is believed to have evolved from the Turkish word çevirme [tʃeviɾˈme], a synonym of döner ("turning, spinning, rotating") and is used in most Arab countries as well as those Latin American countries where there are colonies of Arab emigrants from the Ottoman Empire. Shawarma is, almost always, made of lamb though. In Turkey the dish is usually called simply döner rather than döner kebap or döner kebabı, the latter of those being the most correct form in Turkish. In Armenian, it is tarna, literally meaning "to turn".
Tacos al pastor ("shepherd style tacos") is a dish developed in Central Mexico, likely as a result of the adoption of the shawarma spit-grilled meat brought by Lebanese immigrants to Mexico.[10] While döner kebaps and gyros outside Greece are made from lamb and beef, tacos al pastor in Mexico is made of pork, similar to gyros in Greece.
