Donair History

Donairs are an evolution, a food inspired by, Greek or Turkish "doners", "gyros", "doner kebabs", "kebabs" and "donners."   They're visually similar and are both made with pita bread, but there the similarity stops. 

The ingredients are not the same and they do not taste even remotely similar.  They are a completely different food.  They are the same only in the sense that a peanut -utter-and-banana sandwich, and a Reuben, are the same because they are both served in bread.

Velos Pizza, then located in Bedford, invented the "Halifax donair" about 1971-1973. This was characterized by having an extremely sweet sauce made from condensed milk, sugar, garlic, and vinegar, and ground meat which had been frozen, and then spit roasted.  See the Recipes section for details.

Velos became King of Donair, thus giving King of Donair claim to being the first to introduce donairs to Canada.

The Halifax Donair is slowly spreading westward, with many parts of Quebec, Ontario and Alberta serving Halifax donairs due to the high concentration of maritimers who have gone west looking for work.
 

History of this site

Halifax quintessential geek "Moose", Mike, Michael Dinn (RIP) was involved with every element of the Internet in Nova Scotia in its early days, and was obsessed with donairs and their promotion. Very early on, Moose registered the domain donair.org, imagining it as a worldwide portal for his favourite food, and in the early 2010s, he built and populated a website in the content manager, Drupal 6. When Moose passed away, the domain and that torch was passed on to Dan MacKay.  It's now running in Drupal 10.