What is George’s Famous Gyros?
George’s Famous Gyros is a Greek counter in a strip center at 7620 E McKellips Road, Unit 6, in the far southern corner of South Scottsdale, where the city’s car lots run down toward the Tempe line. It opened in 2006, and its founder was George Salvaridis, then 24, a first-generation Greek who had grown up working in his father’s restaurants in Chicago from the age of 8, lived for a time in Greece, and then gone through aviation school in Arizona. The gyro shop, by his own account to Phoenix New Times in 2010, was his plan B, and he kept his pilot’s license.
The food is Chicago Greek rather than taverna Greek: gyros on a thick, puffy pita with onions, tomatoes and a house tzatziki built on a family recipe that New Times said was already about 20 years old in 2011, plus souvlaki, spanakopita, Greek salads and a fried-chicken-breast plate called Chicken Faliro. The fries matter here. Salvaridis told the paper the oil was changed every four days, and the 2011 Best of Phoenix entry called them almost as famous as the gyros. His co-owner in those years was Zlatko “Z” Redzic, a Croatian-born Le Cordon Bleu graduate out of John Henry’s in Tempe, who ran a secret menu for regulars, including a burger he claimed was the best in town.
The record after 2013 is thin until a June 2026 DiningOut profile of Salvaridis, who now runs a separate restaurant, George’s Famous Gyros & Pasta, in north Phoenix. In it he says he sold the Scottsdale shop about eight years earlier, which puts the sale around 2018, and that the new owners have kept the fresh food and the portion sizes. Yelp’s listing, updated August 2026 with more than 650 reviews, shows it open and still at Unit 6.
Who it is for: people who work along McDowell Road and the McKellips dealerships, Scottsdale Community College students, and anyone from Chicago who has been looking for the right pita. Our verdict: the best gyro in Scottsdale is on an unglamorous block most visitors never see, and it has been there for twenty years.
Ordering at George’s Famous Gyros
Order the Original or the Picado. The Original Gyro is the dish the awards were for: a big heap of seasoned meat on a soft pita with onions, tomatoes and tzatziki, and in 2026 it was listed at $14.50 to $15.25 depending on the ordering platform, with fries or a salad included. The Gyro Picado, the same price, adds sauteed onions, peppers and jalapenos and is the one regulars talk about. A Gyro Supreme ($15.50 to $16.25) piles on lettuce, cucumber and feta. In 2013 the Original was $6.95, so the price has roughly doubled in thirteen years, which is in line with the rest of the Valley.
Then the rest of the board. Souvlaki pita of charbroiled marinated pork loin runs the same as a gyro. Spanakopita is $9 for six pieces. Chicken Faliro ($19.75 to $20.25) is a chicken breast with artichokes and capers in a lemon-wine sauce over pasta or rice, with a Greek salad and garlic bread, and it is the only plate on the menu that reads like dinner. Salads run $12 to $13 for Greek or Caesar and up to about $19 with salmon or shrimp. Gyro-Tots ($13.50) are the appetizer. The 2010 profile also described a chili, half gyro meat and half beef, served on “chili days” after customers complained when it was pulled for the summer; we cannot confirm it survives on the current menu.
Timing. Hours are Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and it is closed Sunday. Saturday is the problem: Yelp listed 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in August 2026, while an ordering site showed 11 to 9:30, so call (480) 874-1354 before a Saturday trip. The 2013 New Times tester’s one complaint was slow service in an empty room, so the mid-afternoon lull is the comfortable window; the weekday lunch rush from the car lots is the busy one.
Getting there. The center is on the north side of McKellips just east of Miller Road, with its own free lot. From Old Town it is a ten-minute drive south on Hayden Road past Papago Plaza and the SkySong campus. It is a counter: order, take a number, sit at one of a handful of tables or take it to go. No reservations, no bar.
The pilot who opened a gyro shop on McKellips
The story New Times told in 2010 is the one that still explains the place. Salvaridis’s family came from Chicago, where his father ran restaurants and put his son to work at 8; they moved to Greece for a stretch and then to Arizona, where the father kept opening restaurants and the son went to flight school. He got his license and then, in 2006, at 24, opened a gyro shop instead. “I pretty much copied everything from my Dad,” he told Laura Hahnefeld. The four-year anniversary that July was celebrated with free gyros and a staff outing to a go-kart track.
It worked faster than most strip-center restaurants do. The 2011 Best of Phoenix issue gave it Best Gyro, and in 2013 the paper’s Gyro Battles column, which pitted Valley gyro shops against each other, ruled for George’s over Niro’s. For a counter on McKellips with no patio, no liquor and no marketing, that is the whole press file, and it is enough: in the 2010s it was the only Scottsdale restaurant of any kind that regularly turned up in Valley-wide gyro arguments.
What the record does not say is as interesting. New Times mentioned in 2010 that a second location was planned within months; we found no evidence it opened under this name. The DiningOut profile of June 2026 says Salvaridis opened multiple pita-based spots around the Valley over the years and now runs George’s Famous Gyros & Pasta at 20206 N 27th Avenue in Phoenix, with his father’s pasta and his grandmother’s chicken on the menu. It says he sold the McKellips shop about eight years earlier and that it should not be confused with his new place. Who bought it, and whether chef Redzic stayed, the press does not record. The menu, the name, the Picado and the Faliro all carried over, which is usually the sign of a sale to someone who worked there.
The corner itself belongs to the part of South Scottsdale that the city’s north-versus-south divide tends to erase: McKellips is the last east-west road before Tempe, and its restaurants serve mechanics, students and the apartment blocks east of Scottsdale Road, not resort guests. That is why a $15 gyro here still feels like a deal.
Honest assessment: this is a very good gyro shop, not a Greek restaurant, and the praise it earned was for a sandwich and a side of fries. The current prices are fair for 2026 but no longer dirt cheap, Saturday hours are a coin flip until you call, and the room is a strip-center box. If you want the gyro Scottsdale argues about, it is this one, and we would drive past three Old Town places to get it.