NY Giants Open Gyro Place on Parkside

In a bold move to capture more of the Halal foods market, co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch and their NY Giants company chose Parkside Avenue as the flagship location for what it hopes will be a worldwide chain of Giant Gyro Joints, as they're colloquially known within the Mara/Tisch families.Tisch is apparently more of a doner kebab man and some reports claim he's tzatziki-intolerant. Still, the two-time Super Bowl ring CEOs believe the future is bright for pita-based sandwiches. We welcome them to the block!

In all seriousness it appears the sign, complete with "borrowed" logo, was made by the same people who brought you "Pancakes in Hell," as the wife calls the bizarre signage attached to the bodega at the NW corner of Flatbush and Woodruff. Personally I love a good gyro, and am endlessly amazed with that oft-displayed hunk of meat on a spit ubiquitous around the world. Did you know (I'm sure you did) that the way you make that hunk is by layering thin layer after thin layer of various boneless meats atop one another, as if you were creating the world's largest submarine sandwich, adding spices and fat between layers, then you smash 'em together in the shape of a big toilet paper roll so that then when you cook it on a spit you can slice it from top to bottom so you're actually getting little bits of each layer in every slice. I was also fascinated to learn that pork is a common ingredient in many countries and was likely an ingredient in the original Greek item known as a "gyro," so the Halal lamb and beef concoction came later from the need to sate the hordes of devout Muslims who, too, needed a heap of spiced meat between pita. The story of tzatziki probably deserves a Ken Burns documentary, so I'll leave it to the "pan-in, pan-out" master to tell the tale.