“I can still remember when doner kebabs were sold for €3.50,” reminisced one teenager amid calls for a price brake to stop rising kebab costs.
The German capital is the birthplace of that ubiquitous European fast food, the doner kebab, and it shows.
Kebab shops line streets of many German cities, particularly in Berlin, and the scent of roasting, skewered meat is never far off.
Some two-million doner kebabs — meat wrapped in bread, topped with sauces and vegetables — are consumed a day in Germany, according to an industry association, quite a lot for a country of 83 million people. And the doner kebab has even supplanted the old stalwart, the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder — as the most popular fast-food dish in the country, according to a 2022 survey.
the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder
Who the hell told this person that Currywurst is made with veal? The standard is pork. And it’s grilled, not fried.
Maybe the article was made up with an LLM?
Common to write a paragraph and some keywords yourself and have an LLMfill out the rest I’m afraid
Beef sausage is the norm for currywurst in the Frankfurt area, but pork is much more common everywhere else.
thank you - I came to comment an “ahahahaha” on that. As if anyone would put (expensive) veal into even a beef sausage…
In my experience, fried is much more common than grilled, which makes sense - for a tiny fast-food place, a frying station is much more useful and cheaper to operate.
Where do you live? I’ve never seen a fast food place fry sausages in Germany.
I’ve seen it in Cologne and the region around it, in Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and a bunch of small cities. Where do you live that you only ever see them grilled? I’ve only really seen them grilled in outdoors scenarios.
Or could you be confusing frying in fat (“frittieren”) with frying in a pan (“braten”)? I’m talking about a heated metal surface with a thin film of oil.
When talking about fast food, frying usually refers to deep frying. I wanted to throw nasty words at you because obviously Currywurst isn’t deep fried.
What word would you have me use to say not grilling, and not deep frying?
I’d call it grilling to be honest. It kinda looks like a teppanyaki, which is a form of grill.
But grilling is over open flame. When I’m frying something in a frying pan, I’m not grilling it.
Teppanyaki literally means “iron pan”. It’s frying, not grilling, the difference is that frying involves contact to a hot surface, while grilling primarily works via infrared radiation, at a distance. Also, air, but that’s not the primary factor otherwise we’d be talking baking: You can absolutely grill something over hot coals on the beach while the wind is carrying all the hot air away. Baking btw works perfectly fine for sausages.
You’ll see that kind of thing being called a Grillplatte in German but that’s because it’s (at least traditionally) an iron plate you put on a grill, not because you’re grilling stuff with it. Culinary and fixture lingo don’t match up in this case.
No frying pans anywhere, either. That would be very impractical in the standard sausage-and-fries shop that sells currywurst.
You do get that you don’t need a literal frying pan for frying, right? You just need an even metal surface with thin oil coating that’s heated. That’s what 90+% of small fast food shops have.
But you can’t seriously try to tell me that every single Imbiss you’ve ever been to has an open flame grill they use for everything.
Who said anything about open flame? I’d assume most of them are going to use electric grills. No oil involved.
But maybe you can link me a picture of the kind of frying device that you have in mind - maybe we just disagree on whether that’s a grill or a fryer.
I’m thinking of something like this:
They call it a “Bräter”/“Bratfläche”, not a grill. Maybe a better word would have been “roasted”, but “grilled” just isn’t something I’ve seen for normal metal-surface-cooking.
For a tiny place, that is, a mobile shack barely large enough to house one, a gas grill makes sense. No need for electrical anything as fridges can also run on gas, and grilling sausages gives way better results than frying.
It might be, but it’s not what I’ve seen. IME it’s very rare to have an open grill. Much more common is a metal plate heated by gas, but that’s frying.
I remember 3,50€ from fucking 2007. They make it seem like the prices have gone up from that within the last two years. Meat is way too cheap anyway.
In 2017 I could still find Döner for 4€ in Nürnberg. Now it’s 7,50€.
Which is a clear sign for Döner being consistent with overall rise of prices due to inflationin the last 20 years. Maybe it has been too cheap for too long. Bad working conditions, a lot or family business where family members “help out” to deal with the heavy competition etc.
Lol. This fuckin guy actually believes the spoils are trickling down to workers and small businesses! I have a bridge you might be interested in…
Meat is way too cheap anyway.
This is why I hate that they are focussing on Döner and are even asking for a Dönerpreisbremse. For all I care, discuss falafels, french fries, anything that has no meat in it. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but it is hilarious to complain that a meat based dish should still be the “easily affordable” fast food for everyone. In 2024. Come on.
I paid between 2,50€ and 4€ around 2016-2018 (depending on the city and place). It’s far more recent than 2007.
2007 I paid 2,50€ as a student. Yes meat is way too cheap but today I even pay at least 7€ for a vegetarian one.
Meat is way too cheap anyway.
What do you mean “meat is way too cheap”? Are you a kebab joint owner?
From an ecological point, meat is too cheap as long as the general population can afford to eat it more than once or twice per week. Meat is very ineffective to produce, requiring vast amounts of water and cattle feed to be grown. It was never supposed to be a three times a day staple of every meal, and the fact that we have normalized it to that point is really unhealthy both for ourselves and the planet we are ruining to keep production going.
What do you mean “never supposed to”? The world wasn’t designed.
Anyway, meat can still be cheap without the intensive factory farming practices in the US. Chickens are very cheap to raise on pasture and produce much tastier meat as well! They can be watered with well water and supplemented with minimal grain feed.
Factory farming is the only efficient way to have meat for billions of people. About 95% of bovine meat is factory farmed. Its impossible to turn the entire industry free range, and it can’t be done for cheaper.
It also requires raising about 50 chickens before a person’s economy of scale can compete with the sticker cost at the supermarket.
At least in the US there are a number of subsidies that help to keep meat prices low, which isn’t really great because it increases demand for one of the more environmentally damaging foods to produce.
A pack of dried beef is like 4 euros where i live. The vegan alternative is smoked beets, which basically tastes the same but comes in a smaller packet and is like 8.50. So you’re telling me it’s cheaper to raise a cow, feed it, make sure it doesn’t move too much, drive it somewhere to get killed, get it butchered, and smoked and dried than slice beets and smoke it?
Could it be that the beets are too expensive, by which I really mean that the proletariat is exploited and denied the benefits of the surplus gained by their increasing productivity.
I guess the quality of the meat they’re produced en masse.
2007?
I payed 4€ at my local döner shop before the pandemic. Last year it was 6 and last week i payed 8€ for it.
Doubled the price since 2020!!
There was one place where i was living where you could get one for 2.90€ as recently as 2018. It wasn’t the best, but it was great value.
I moved around then, so I have no idea what it costs now.
I remember 3.50 around 2010 in some parts of Berlin. In Munich it was over 5. Pre pandemic it was around 7 and now it’s 8 or 9 (haven’t bought one in a while).
Prices for Dürüm, BTW, the clearly superior kebab delivery mechanism.
Yeah this has some real “old me yells at cloud” vibes.
When I was a teenager, every wednesday I went to the movies next town over because they were showing a random movie. I was not allowed to drive, so I took the train. Ticket was 1,30€. Today, the ticket costs 5,90€. “Inflation”.
I was expecting you would say you went to the next town because they had kebab… :(
Thr town I live in has like 10000 souls. Gastronomy looks like this: 1 Italian restaurant, 1 Chinese restaurant, a Chinese take-away and 5 kebap places.
Not even a gasthaus?
Any clues as yo your age or when these two prices took place?
I’m speaking around 2006 compared to now.
I don’t get the quotes, as in it’s not inflation but price gouging?
Cause I thought that was true in North America and less true in Europe cause energy did get very expensive.
Do you remember the döner riots of '24?
The Bell riots are due in a couple months. Maybe this is the real catalyst.
I’m looking forward to seeing Gabriel and fighting with him.
Stranger things have happened. Reminds me of the Bavarian beer riots of 1844.
The local version of this in southern California is the Banh Mi, a Vietnamese sandwich on a baguette. Less than 10 years ago you could get a good banh mi for 3 or 4 bucks, and these days even the cheapest I’ve seen are $6.50 and many places are charging over $10 for this perfect sandwich. At least double in under 10 years :(
Banh Mi is also way better than shitty Döner.
Maybe compare it to a good döner instead of a shitty one.
All fucking Döner taste the same. Anyone who claims to know the best Döner in town is full of shit. It’s garbage meat that is lathered in copious amounts of spices. It all tastes the same.
You sound like me talking about Philly cheese steak. They are dry and bland compared to a proper Italian Beef here in Chicagoland. And yeah, in talking about authentic Philly, not some local knockoff. They’re just super overrated.
Döner is okay. A good falafel and seitan shawarma on the other hand is amazing
I absolutely agree with the latter two options. I’ve also always preferred a Pita over a Döner. Either one of those is only acceptable when drunk however.
You’re mad.
On the other hand, feeling angst is part of being German, isn’t it?
You guys came up with the word.
You don’t have a word in your language that has a similar meaning? (like “fear” for example)
The word “angst” was taken over as a part of the language. It’s a specific type of fear, sort of mixed with anxiety. Fear and angst aren’t interchangable
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It was a Nietzsche joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Angst_and_dread
For Kierkegaard, anxiety/dread/angst is “freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.” Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences an aversion to the possibility of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our “dizziness of freedom.”
Nietzsche later picked it up, himself using Angst as that’s basically the same word as Danish angst (shocking, I know). Danish also has frygt, German Furcht, English fright, which is immediate and not apprehensive. Reactive, not agentive. Fright is something that happens to you, dread is something you do. At least in theory people don’t always make a clear distinction, they’re blending into each other.
Do note how angst is translated as anxiety or dread, here, which is correct. In psychology English uses anxiety where German uses Angst, both existentialists were talking about psychology, which leaves us with the question on why English philosophers felt the need to import the Danish, or German, or whatever, word, when they had two perfectly fine words of their own.
I feel like “angst” has a competition of uncomfortableness. It’s maybe more specific than anxiety and not as oppressive. Like teenage angst, it’s temporary
Dutch has the same word: angst. In my experience it’s not as “heavy” as Angst in German, but rather interchangeable with “schrik hebben” or “bang zijn”. Though “angstig zijn” might be more of longer duration, like a character trait of a person.
“Angst” in german is just the translation of normal fear. It doesn’t has the implication of existential threat it has in english.
I think you guys got the word from Sigmund Freud and gave it a very loaded meaning it doesnt have in german.
As a southern Californian, I measure inflation by the cost of tacos.
Inflation is out of control, despite whatever metrics the government uses. Tacos don’t lie.
This thumbnail goes hard.
Gas was $0.89
Gas is still $0.89.
Dude this isn’t Saudi Arabia.
I just paid $0.89 for gas today in Colorado. Granted, for a fraction, a 1/4 of a gallon roughly.
No its—damnit.
I think Turkey and Greece can finally agree on one thing
spoiler
That Germany didn’t invent doner lmao
Supposedly the specific form of Doner Kebab was made by Turkish immigrants in the 70s in West Berlin
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Some two-million doner kebabs — meat wrapped in bread, topped with sauces and vegetables — are consumed a day in Germany, according to an industry association, quite a lot for a country of 83 million people.
And the doner kebab has even supplanted the old stalwart, the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder — as the most popular fast-food dish in the country, according to a 2022 survey.
It’s become such an issue, that some politicians belonging to the far-left Die Linke, or the Left party, are calling for a “price brake” on the doner kebab.
“When young people demand: ‘Olaf, make the kebab cheaper,’ this is not an internet joke, but a serious call for help!” wrote Kathi Gebel, a member of the Left party’s executive committee, in a manifesto on the subject.
The calls for a price brake have become so frequent, that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz felt obliged to respond on TikTok.
Economists also warn that a doner price brake could also lead to a shortage of the kebabs — an unintended effect that could potentially create more unrest given the importance of the street food in German society.
The original article contains 765 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I have never heard of this fast food, but it looks like if a gyro was made burrito bowl style and stuffed in a Chinese takeout container. Maybe we should get these here in the States.
It is basically a gyro.
Gyros Greek though and kebab is Turkish. Even if they are eerily similar both cultures will go to war over them being different.
Gyros is made from spicy, marinated meat. Döner is made from just meat and fat, without any spicing or marinating or whatever. Gyros is made from pork, döner is a mixture of lamb and beef. They’re also served a bit differently.
They’re plenty different originally. In Germany they’ve been bastardized a little bit and brought close to each other. And then Germany went and declared they invented döner kebap, which is of course utter bullshit.
You could argue that the spinning rotissery is the main factor in this dish, it is in the name in most cultures. The type of meat used differ indeed, but most recipes I’ve read of doner kebap do include a spice marinade f.i.:
Combine flour, oregano, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, black pepper, and cayenne pepper in a large bowl.
But the main thing I was going about is that the two nations share a bunch of history, and therefore culture, but after Greek independance they have tried very hard to distance themselves from each other. The main difference is that in Greece you’ll never find an option for hot sauce with your gyros, whilst in Turkey it is on offer.
Interesting here in Canada we call it Donair and it’s made from spiced meat. Lamb, beef or chicken. Then there is tzatziki sauce or garlic and hummus, and pickled vegetables as well as regular ones.
We also claim to have invented it, the “Halifax Donair” yet it’s sure similar to Turkish shawarma and Greek gyros…
Turkish shawarma doesn’t exist. That’s more towards the middle east. You won’t really, find it in Turkey. Though I wish you could, because more diversity is always more better.
Anyway, the way naming kebap dishes works (kebap is not a dish, it’s the name of a large and diverse family of meat dishes, not unlike salad) is you can introduce all sorts of variations into an existing dish, afterwards you’re free to slap your own name on it. There are hundreds of examples of this in Turkish cuisine. So, Halifax Donair is fine. You invented a new variation of an existing kebap dish, you get to name it and claim ownership. That’s how it is. What Germany has done is put their own regional spin on döner kebap, which had long existed, and then claim to have invented döner kebap itself. Call it Berlin kebap or whatever, but don’t use the name of an existing dish. That’s like claiming ownership of pizza margherita just because you added a couple new toppings and baked it in a square pan. It’s dumb and wrong.
Eh screw Turkey, their president is a dick.
a gyro? do you mean a gyros?
It’s still too cheap
I usually disregard this type of food wars, but the article using clear cut phrasing to attribute döner to Germany in 2 instances has quite triggered me as a Turkish person. I can shrug off the title if it was all there is to it, but what the hell of a British culture-stealing attempt is it to call Berlin the birthplace of döner, and it a European food coupled with that? If one did not know better, one would think that such a food being almost used as point to refuse Turkey’s integration to EU a European cuisine.
What’s next, our Kokoreç is a French food?
Döner “mit alles und ohne scharf” is the best kind of integration, and has been invented in Germany (by a Turkish chef).
Do I bring a pizza home and add meat cooked in Turkish styles and call pizza a Turkish cuisine?
Probably more accurate than calling it Italian. Also, lahmacun exists.
It does, and this point does not contradict food mis-attribution. Still again, calling an appropriated food something else is reflecting the changes well enough to put them in the name, rather than stealing the attribution for a cultural part as much as to go into calling a variety land the birthplace.
No, but lots of people will argue that modern pizza is a US invention due in large part to the cultural aspects attached to it which differ from the Italian version of the dish. Most places in the world, if you just order pizza blindly, you will get an American slice. You have to specifically look around for Italian style pies, and they are not nearly as ubiquitous.
I don’t expect a Turkish style döner to be delivered in Europe, either. But the part about pizza being called an American invention, modern or not, I seriously doubt it.
Birthplace aside, doner is European because Europe includes both Germany and Turkey.
“European” is not the same as “EU member”.
And this is just when the arbitrary culture lines decide when to include Turkey as a whole in Europe because it is convenient this time.
I wonder what the most governments and people of Europe were thinking during the decision to house 10 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, practically acting as floodplains for the refugees crises they engineered in the Middle East, citing “similar cultures” as the reason? I believe they were thinking " Turkey is a part of the Middle East, not Europe.
Turkey is within Europe. It’s a question of geography, not culture.
What people think about Turkish culture is a completely separate question. Americans have a similar culture to the British, but that does not make Americans part of Europe. Nor can Turkey’s culture move their land outside of Europe.
With geography considered, Turkey has 80% of its landmass in Asia. With how you interpret the geographical continents, you can even say the whole old world is simply Asia and Africa. It is a matter of preference than it is a matter of any other aspect, anyway. And you don’t have to go far, just visit your nearest general online map community, to see that Turkey’s situation especially is a matter of preference and convenience.
And such a food is mostly a culture related thing rather than a geographical feature. Yes, geography and culture is intertwined on a lot of topics, and some food types are almost completely related to the geographical situation, like fish based cuisine being a staple of Japanese cuisine, but you can hardly call a red meat with different cooking style a matter of geography.
Yes, Turkey is both in Europe and in Asia. The same is true of Russia.
Food is definitely cultural. Which means doner is part of European culture. Just like Russian borscht.
The modern Döner was indeed invented in Berlin. e.g. check Wikipedia
The modern sandwich variant of döner kebab originated and was popularized in 1970s West Berlin by Turkish immigrants. This was recognized by the Berlin-based Association of Turkish Doner Manufacturers in Europe in 2011.
You should start with the first paragraph of that same wikipedia page to see the Döner Kebab being originated in Turkey, going back to 1800s.
Many food types have regional and personal or family variants, but no one calls taco prepared in Europe with different ingredients oroginated in Europe. Notably, the same wikipedia mentions the Arab variant is called Shawarma, which is a more culture-respecting approach than whatever this article does.
The original Turkish Döner Kebab comes on a plate, not in pide or dürüm, nor would Turks ever really entertain the idea of putting Tsatsiki or any sauce on meat, and you’ll also be hard-pressed to see them eat cabbage.
Meanwhile you’ll be hard-pressed to see Germans eat meat without sauce, and various forms of cabbage-containing salad are very popular.
The Döner in its German form is Turkish-German fusion food. It could not have occurred without two culinary traditions meeting. Heck, the name isn’t even grammatical in Turkish. The meat, both style and preparation and spices, is 100% Turkish, the bread is Turkish-inspired but underwent German bread engineering, the rest is either native German or previous imports: It really is Tsatsiki, not Cacık. No dill, no mint, and no water. If you want diluted yoghurt you can have Ayran.
If you nowadays see German-style Döner in Turkey then that’s because the idea has been re-imported.
Both Döner and Kebab are words that passed into English and other European languages from Turkish. Importing these words to form an ungrammatical phrase is a feature of borrowing words from another language. While the new word, and new food, may be considered a word of the importing language, as many English and German words are, they are never considered the origin or birthplace. Same goes for food.
With this logic of changing something on top of the same base thing a calling it originating in a new country already shows itself as contract manufacturing, and many would considered slapping a Made in the U.S. label while all the work except a laser logo engraving comes from somewhere else a malpractice and marketing customarily, although it is legal.
With the same logic, one can even go as much as culture-stealing with calling all the damaged cultural heritage in the British museums a British artifact, since they are no longer the same artifact they were in their homelands. Hell, lets go even painting these old statues with modern paint practices and call them originating from wherever they are painted.
Origin is something, cultural assimilation in a neutral connotation is another.
Dude noone in Germany is denying the Turkish roots of Döner and neither is the Politico article.
Americans eat Hamburgers. That’s a Fischbrötchen with the fish replaced with unseasoned Frikadelle, doused in that ketchup of theirs. I can tell you, with absolute authority, that Hamburg doesn’t claim to have invented it, at least not in the form that the US and the world knows it. The utmost claim is that HAPAG served Frikadellen (proper ones with onions and everything) in buns on their emigration ships to the US to save on dishwashing costs while making sure people would be fit enough to get past Ellis Island (there was a return trip and money back guarantee).
So, stop it. Or I’ll call Raki an Ouzo ersatz.
Call it whatever you want, my energy to protest against western media’s bias in what to call with bad connotations, whom to call terrorists, which European country to attribute what popular thing, what topic to underreport has its limits and I have hardly any tolerance left to discuss the sidetracking details about this.
Nah your energy is to be as offended as possible to feel as superior as possible.
Also have you ever analysed the coverage of Northern Ireland in Rwanda’s press. Selective reporting! Selective reporting!
