LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – If you ask the owners of the four gyro shops in downtown Lincoln how they got started, the story will have two things in common. Gyros, of course. Also, family.
For decades now, a mostly friendly but sometimes contentious gyro war has been waged at the corner of 14th and O streets between the two original shops: George’s Gourmet Grill and Ali Baba’s.
Now, the gyro fight has grown into the next generation with two more shops, Pita & Naan and The Sultan’s Kite. Both are run by nephews of the longtime owner of Ali Baba’s.
All four exist and battle for Lincoln’s gyro supremacy within an uncomfortably small two-block radius. For my money, several of the state’s best gyros are made right here, in competing restaurants owned by different branches of the same family. (Flatwater voters disagree: See the gyro winner in the sandwich bracket, and vote for your favorites here.)
“We all know each other. We come across each other, you know, on the street,” said Omar Attaie, who runs Pita & Naan with his dad, Mahboob, a veteran of Ali Baba’s, and Malalay, his mom, a former cook at Lincoln Country Club. “It’s a friendly competition, I guess, is what I would call it.”
Pita & Naan owner Omar Attaie, right, with his father, Mahboob Attaie. Mahboob Attaie worked for more than 35 years at another downtown Lincoln gyro shop, Ali Baba’s, before opening a new shop with his son and wife. Photo by(Naomi Delkamiller/Flatwater Free Press)
The tale of the gyro wars is a long and winding one that goes back nearly a half century, when George’s Greek Gyros opened in the spot now occupied by Ali Baba’s, 112 N. 14th St.
Strangely, much of this history is preserved in a story my husband (and Flatwater editor) Matthew Hansen wrote for the Lincoln Journal Star all the way back in 2005.
Here are the basics: Mansour Kholousi moved to Lincoln in 1978 to go to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s engineering college, and bought George’s in 1984 from a Greek couple. He kept the restaurant’s name and adopted it for himself, too.
He also made perhaps the most strategic move ever calculated in the gyro wars: He kept his kitchen open until 2 a.m.
In those halcyon days of the 1980s and ’90s, late-night lines of college kids would often stretch down the block until the early hours of the morning. If all the tables were full, as they often were, kids ate their gyros on the street.
George expanded his business quickly, including to the bay next door, 1400 O St., where he sold popcorn and snacks. But the expansion was too quick, and he closed all his locations but one in a few years.
The corner bay sold and turned into a burger joint called The Gourmet Grill. Someone else bought the gyro shop and called it Ali Baba’s. The two new owners hated each other.
The Gourmet Grill owner invited George to come back. He did, and started making gyros in addition to the burgers and fries already on the menu. A few years later, in 1990, Naqib Attaie bought Ali Baba’s. The rival shop also stayed open until 2 a.m.
Naqib and one of his brothers, Mahboob, learned to make gyros while working and living in Frankfurt, Germany. Mahboob worked with his brother in Lincoln at the shop for more than 35 years, and though he might not always remember regular customers’ names, he has an almost photographic memory for their faces, his son Omar said. To this day, he remembers their orders.
Longtime Lincoln food writer Jeff Korbelik remembers being one of the college kids in the 1980s who would wait in line at one of the two shops after the O Street bars closed at 1 a.m. Most everyone, he said, had a favorite gyro spot, and never went to the other. His was Ali Baba’s. (Later, when I was a college kid in the late 1990s following in Korbelik’s footsteps, Ali Baba’s was my shop of choice, too.) He said one reason he thinks the two shops became so popular was because they were, in a way, ahead of their time.
“When I moved back to Nebraska in 1996, there wasn’t anywhere to get a late-night meal. I think (the two gyro shops) did most of their business between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.”
Both Omar Attaie and his cousin, Sultan Attaie, worked at Ali Baba’s. At some point, Sultan broke off and decided to open his own shop, which he did, in 2010. The Sultan’s Kite is about a two-minute walk from Ali Baba’s, at 1309 O St.
The gyro at Ali Baba’s looks strikingly similar to the one down the street at Pita & Naan, with one big difference: the tzatziki sauce. It’s more mild at Ali Baba’s, but the sandwich otherwise has the same set of ingredients: gyro meat, red onion, tomatoes and feta cheese, served on pita bread.(Photo by Sarah Baker Hansen/Flatwater Free Press)
Some of the family members were upset by Sultan’s competitive new spot, Korbelik said.
“The uncles thought, ‘We taught you how to do this, and then you went and did your own thing,’” he said. “And Sultan is a very, very good business person.”
“It was an interesting time for the family,” Omar Attaie said, chuckling.
Sultan Attaie serves gyros at The Sultan’s Kite, of course, but also other Mediterranean dishes, like falafel, lentil soup and chicken shawarma.
He adopted a fast-casual service model, in the style of Chipotle, where diners choose to get their shawarma or gyro meat on top of rice, lettuce, pita, potatoes or French fries, then walk down the counter and finish it with a variety of sauces, cheese and vegetables. Sultan’s mother, like Omar’s, also helps him with the cooking at the restaurant, including a popular new chicken tikka korma option.
Sultan is especially proud, he said, of his signature spicy tzatziki sauces. (I tried his spicy green tzatziki on a gyro; it’s incredibly good.)
In the meantime, Omar also left Ali Baba’s, went to business school at UNL and got a job in corporate America. But the idea of a restaurant always lingered in the back of his mind. Every time the family would have guests over to eat, they’d rave about his mom’s Afghan food.
“They would say, ‘You know, if you sold this, you’d have a line out the door,’” Omar said. “We just kept joking around about it until one day, I thought, ‘Well, what if I quit my job? What if we do this?’”
In 2022, Pita & Naan opened on the other end of O Street from The Sultan’s Kite, at 1434 O St. It’s also a two-minute walk from Ali Baba’s, just in the other direction.
Like his cousin and uncle, Omar serves gyros, shawarma and falafel. But he harnessed his mother’s skills and grew his menu in a different direction: curry.
She makes butter chicken, one of the most popular dishes on the menu, as well as an Afghan meatball korma and a yellow curry chicken. If you can’t decide on just one, you can get a combination plate with two.
Business for both Pita & Naan and The Sultan’s Kite has changed since the early 2000s, as O Street bar culture has waned and fewer students spend their weekends (and heck, their weeknights) gallivanting through bars.
Now, more people use delivery services like Doordash to get their late-night food fix. Lincoln now also boasts lots of late-night dining options on O Street, and many more restaurants in general than it used to thanks to developments like the Railyard.
Today, both Sultan and Omar said they do the bulk of their business at 1 p.m. instead of 1 a.m., though both shops still stay open until 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.
After Pita & Naan opened in 2022, the tale of the Lincoln gyro wars took one more turn: In 2023, Naqib, who was ready to retire and move to Texas, sold Ali Baba’s. To Sultan. This was a surprise, well, to everybody. Except for Sultan, that is.
“I know the name has been here for a long time, and I didn’t want somebody else to come and compete with Sultan’s Kite,” he said. “So I just took it over.”
Sultan is busy expanding his gyro empire beyond the two blocks in downtown Lincoln. He has opened two more locations of Sultan’s Kite, one at 14th and Pine Lake Road and another at 61st and O streets near Gateway Mall. Another Ali Baba’s is on the way, too, near 13th and Arapahoe.
He said the new locations have become destinations for the families of his old, late-night customers.
“People know us by our name,” Sultan said. “I think we’re just going to get more popular.”
Omar, the Pita & Naan owner, said the newest family gyro restaurant is drawing a new base of customers interested in trying the food on his menu they’ve never had before. He said the restaurant draws a lot of women in addition to a small but devoted crowd of late-night diners, mostly men, who know his dad.
Omar had a child of his own about a year ago, and he said his goal is for the business to be “more than a restaurant.” Pita & Naan started several initiatives to give back to the Lincoln community, including donating to organizations like the Lincoln Food Bank and Matt Talbot Kitchen, and donating a portion of their sales to nonprofits that help resettle refugees.
“I want something that three generations of the family can be proud of,” he said.
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Dining and Cooking