Souvlaki

Souvlaki (Greek: σουβλάκι [suˈvlaci]), plural souvlakia, is a popular Greek fast food consisting of small pieces of meat and sometimes vegetables grilled on a skewer. It is usually served with grilled bread, or in a pita wrap with garnishes and sauces, or on a dinner plate, often with fried potatoes. The meat usually used in Greece and Cyprus is pork, although chicken, beef, and lamb may also be used. In other countries and for tourists, souvlaki may be made with meats such as lamb, beef, chicken, and sometimes fish (especially swordfish)..

The word souvlaki is a diminutive of the Medieval Greek σούβλα souvla 'skewer', itself borrowed from Latin subula. 'Souvlaki' is the common term in northern Greece, while in southern Greece it is commonly known as 'kalamaki'.

Excavations in Santorini, Greece, unearthed stone sets of barbecue for skewers used before the 17th century BC. In each pair of the supports, the receptions for the spits are found in absolute equivalence, while the line of small openings in the base formed a mechanism to supply the coals with oxygen so that they remained alight during its use.Mycenaean Greeks used portable trays as grills. These trays were rectangular ceramic pans that sat underneath skewers of meat but it is not clear whether these trays would have been placed directly over a fire or if the pans would have held hot coals like a portable barbecue pit.Homer in Iliad (1.465) mentions pieces of meat roasted on spits (ὀβελός). It is mentioned also amongst others in the works of Aristophanes,Xenophon,Aristotle, etc. In Classical Greece, a small spit or skewer was known as ὀβελίσκος (obeliskos), and Aristophanes mentions such skewers being used to roast thrushes, but there is no direct evidence of chunks of meat being skewered. A meat and bread recipe which resembles the way pita souvlaki is served today, with pita bread was also attested by Athenaeus in Deipnosophistae and called the plate κάνδαυλος, kandaulos.

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