The Joy of Kebab, From Doner Till Dawn
A good doner kebab can improve a bad day, mark a good one, and even be the key to curing and/or preventing a hangover. Allegedly.
It is rather clichéd to say that a certain food can instantly teleport you to a specific time and place, but clichés come from somewhere. That somewhere is often a place of truth, and the truth of the matter is that food grabs all five of our senses and lodges into our brains in a unique way.
The German version of doner kebab does that for me.
Somehow the current craze of foodies discovering and reinventing street food has still mostly skipped over the Turkish offering that has dominated German fast food since either Memhet Aygun or Kadir Nurman — depending on which version of which story you believe — started slinging the shaved meat onto bread for the masses. Germany has more than 17,000 kebab shops of different variations, more than all the McDonald’s and Burger Kings combined. Shaving meat off a vertical spit and stuffing some type of bread full of toppings and sauce makes a great grab and go meal. So portable and filling, it is well known that a long night out on the town usually involves a doner kebab as pre-gaming before, hangover maintenance after, or second wind-inducing during reveling in the wee hours…
