It can be served with or inside a rolled pita, typically with lemon, sauces, vegetables such as sliced tomato and onion, and fried potatoes as a side.

[1] The word souvlaki is a diminutive of the Medieval Greek souvla (σούβλα meaning "skewer") itself borrowed from Latin subula.

[5] In the stone cooking supports, there are pairs of indentations that were likely used for holding skewers and the line of holes in the base allowed the coals to be supplied with air.

[4] The "souvlaki trays" (or portable grills) used by the Mycenaean Greeks were rectangular ceramic pans that sat underneath skewers of meat.

[4] 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.

[15] Modern-day souvlaki was described by Gustave Flaubert, a French traveler, who observed Greeks "grilling pieces of meat on a bamboo stick" during his visit to the Boeotian countryside of southern Central Greece in 1850.

[16] Souvlaki skewers served as fast food started to be sold widely in the 1960s, after being introduced by vendors from Boeotia.

Into this is placed the meat (traditionally lamb or pork, more recently sheftalia or chicken), which in Cypriot souvlaki is cut into slightly larger chunks.