What is street food? Street food is good food that's not fancy. It's a great meal you can order quickly, yet without feeling like you're supposed to leave fast. It's food the locals usually know about--food that you don't feel strange eating by yourself, but are always glad to reveal to a special friend. Street food costs less than $10 per person. You order it at the counter, or at least pay for it there.
Döner: Born and "Bread" in Berlin
by Benjamin TischerMy first döner happened like this: One inhumanly frigid January night I was taken by a number of Germans to the Mitte neighborhood of Berlin. After an evening of Budvar and Beck's, it occurred to my host that that we had not eaten. "We must have döner," he beamed. "It will warm us." To my query as to what this döner was, and where we would get it, the Berliner expressed shock and dismay. ""You do not know döner?" he exclaimed. "It is the national food of Berlin!"
Okay, okay, so Berlin isn't a nation. But what made the pronouncement even weirder was this Deutschlander introducing a Turkish delight as his own. Let's face it, Germany has had some, um, racial tension in the past. And they're known to have a certain penchant for wurst and sauerkraut. But the fact is that the döner kebab sandwich has been lovingly adopted by the nation, and outsells not only American imports like hamburgers and pizza, but even the native sausages.
Basically, döner is a big spit of meat compressed into the shape of an old-fashioned top, slowly spinning as it cooks by an open flame. It's full of garlic and peppers and marinated lamb, veal, or beef (or sometimes a blend of all three), and sometimes chicken. As it turns, the cone of meat is roasted by the flame and then slowly carved down in very thin slices with a very long knife. Next, the meat makes its way into a tasty toasted pita along with tomatoes, red cabbage, onions and lettuce. There are normally two sauces to choose from: creamy garlic (knoblauch) or spicy chili pepper (scharfe). It's kind of like a fancier variant of the Greek gyro. (Of course, don't tell that to the Turks!)
The basic recipe is nothing new. Folks in Turkey have been eating the stuff for over 150 years, when a chef named Iskender in the city of Bursa started stripping cuts of mutton of all bones and sinews, and conveniently stacking and compacting them on a long vertical spit, to be turned and roasted. Still, this doesn't stop Berliners from claiming the stuff as their own. I've had numerous Germans state with pride that döner is a distinctly Teutonic phenomenon, existing nowhere else. This is entirely untrue, but there are some grounds for the claim. You see, the Germans added one crucial element to döner in order to ease its transition to street food fame--the bread. They made the turning meat convenient, and hence made it their own, much in the same manner that America co-opted the frankfurter by adding a bun.
The combo works. According to German Life magazine, on average every Deutschlander eats 10 döners a year, even more in Berlin. The country's capital is the so-called birthplace of the dish, and with well over 1300 imbiss (which translates to "snack") stands stuffing pitas full of the savory slices, the love affair hardly seems over. That the average kebab costs DM4 (that's less than two bucks), probably helps, too. Oh, and by the way, Berliners also swear döner is the perfect hangover cure. Some even claim that the döner is responsible for improving race relations within Germany.
Maybe so, but with the proliferation of Deutsch-döner culture, the quality has slipped a bit. Most of the meat is now mass-produced, and connoisseurs claim most of the street-sold sandwiches don't deserve the name. But there are more than a few stands that still do it right. In Berlin, some say the best neighborhood for true döner is Kreuzberg. Maybe, but my money says Mitte. There on the corner of Rosenthaler Platz, next to a bookstore is where I went for my initiation. It doesn't have a name, but the döner is hot, fresh and super-greasy good.
Benjamin Tischer is a member of the matrimonial art collective Bengala and editor of K48 Magazine. He currently divides his time between New York and Berlin.
