4 ms·

As someone whose been living in Berlin for the last 11 years I'm always horrified to read people say they wish the had high quality kebabs "like in Berlin" - th

by ido 2y ago

As someone whose been living in Berlin for the last 11 years I'm always horrified to read people say they wish the had high quality kebabs "like in Berlin" - the average kebab here is atrocious (obviously optimized for price and not for quality) - the best ones are OK but definitely not amazing. I don't want to find out how bad the kebabs are in Sweden and other places you hear the from like some US cities if you think Berlin kebab is high quality in comparison.

klausa 2y ago
As someone who moved out of Berlin a year and a half ago — you truly do not want to find out how other people live. I know getting something on the same level as Rüyam would be impossible; but I would pay a not-insignificant money for something resembling a random Bude near my old place.
vanderZwan 2y ago
Well, technically I did say "has best options", not "the kebab quality median is great". I now live in Malmö, which has a much higher number of people from Middle-Eastern countries, so their cuisine is also a lot better than what you can get in Stockholm. However, since I've also become vegetarian in the intervening years I could not tell you what the local quality of the kebab is. Falafel is pretty passable though. And one of my Iraqi friends has said the better places in Malmö win the "least disappointing experience in Sweden compared to home" award, for what it's worth.
- ido 2y ago
  "Least disappointing experience" is how I would put the better kebab places in Berlin! Shawarma in Tel Aviv is not exactly the same but similar and so much better (of course there's a lot of variability in quality there too, and it costs something like 2-3x as much as kebabs in Berlin). I'm sure you can also get amazing specimen in Arab countries and in Turkey (I don't have first hand experience there).
  - OkayPhysicist 2y ago
    As someone who spends a lot of time travelling, I'd rank Istanbul to have the best döner in the world. You find alright stuff in Germany, acceptable options in the rest of Europe, and I've never failed to be disappointed by döner in the US (which is a shame, because I keep trying it because it's a top 10 good for me) This is frankly odd, given that for most cuisines I can point at some other place surpassing the original. The best Italian food I've had has been in Chicago, the best Mexican food I've had is in San Diego. You can find extremely good authentic Chinese food in the Bay Area if you know where to look, but I can't say I've covered enough of China to confidently decide a winner there.
    - ido 2y ago
      Yeah I can't really tell why it's so challenging to find good levantine and Middle Eastern food in Europe (even in places with lots of Turkish and Arab immigrants). Turkish döner vs Arab shawarma is more of a matter of taste (the döner is fattier and the dairy based sauces make it even fattier which is not to my taste but is not objectively bad thing) but I don't get what's so hard it making it that you can't get good results outside its homelands. At least in Germany I suspect it has something to do with Germans considering it cheap fast food and as such are very price sensitive - there's only so much you can do when you have to cut every expense as much as possible.
  - vanderZwan 2y ago
    Ok but I was talking about European cities, and Döner Kebab. You're comparing it to a different dish as made in a country from the Arabian peninsula. It's fine to say that the latter is the better food but it makes no sense in the context of arguing where to get the best kebab in Europe.
    - ido 2y ago
      I'm not arguing about where to get the best döner kebab in Europe. Just saying it's sad that the best we can get is this mediocre. Shawarma is basically a variation of the same dish: "The shawarma technique—grilling a vertical stack of meat slices and cutting it off as it cooks—first appeared in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in the form of döner kebab,[1][14][15] which both the Greek gyros and the Levantine shawarma are derived from." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma

by ido 2y ago

klausa 2y ago

As someone who moved out of Berlin a year and a half ago — you truly do not want to find out how other people live. I know getting something on the same level as Rüyam would be impossible; but I would pay a not-insignificant money for something resembling a random Bude near my old place.

vanderZwan 2y ago

Well, technically I did say "has best options", not "the kebab quality median is great". I now live in Malmö, which has a much higher number of people from Middle-Eastern countries, so their cuisine is also a lot better than what you can get in Stockholm. However, since I've also become vegetarian in the intervening years I could not tell you what the local quality of the kebab is. Falafel is pretty passable though. And one of my Iraqi friends has said the better places in Malmö win the "least disappointing experience in Sweden compared to home" award, for what it's worth.

ido 2y ago
"Least disappointing experience" is how I would put the better kebab places in Berlin! Shawarma in Tel Aviv is not exactly the same but similar and so much better (of course there's a lot of variability in quality there too, and it costs something like 2-3x as much as kebabs in Berlin). I'm sure you can also get amazing specimen in Arab countries and in Turkey (I don't have first hand experience there).
- OkayPhysicist 2y ago
  As someone who spends a lot of time travelling, I'd rank Istanbul to have the best döner in the world. You find alright stuff in Germany, acceptable options in the rest of Europe, and I've never failed to be disappointed by döner in the US (which is a shame, because I keep trying it because it's a top 10 good for me) This is frankly odd, given that for most cuisines I can point at some other place surpassing the original. The best Italian food I've had has been in Chicago, the best Mexican food I've had is in San Diego. You can find extremely good authentic Chinese food in the Bay Area if you know where to look, but I can't say I've covered enough of China to confidently decide a winner there.
  - ido 2y ago
    Yeah I can't really tell why it's so challenging to find good levantine and Middle Eastern food in Europe (even in places with lots of Turkish and Arab immigrants). Turkish döner vs Arab shawarma is more of a matter of taste (the döner is fattier and the dairy based sauces make it even fattier which is not to my taste but is not objectively bad thing) but I don't get what's so hard it making it that you can't get good results outside its homelands. At least in Germany I suspect it has something to do with Germans considering it cheap fast food and as such are very price sensitive - there's only so much you can do when you have to cut every expense as much as possible.
- vanderZwan 2y ago
  Ok but I was talking about European cities, and Döner Kebab. You're comparing it to a different dish as made in a country from the Arabian peninsula. It's fine to say that the latter is the better food but it makes no sense in the context of arguing where to get the best kebab in Europe.
  - ido 2y ago
    I'm not arguing about where to get the best döner kebab in Europe. Just saying it's sad that the best we can get is this mediocre. Shawarma is basically a variation of the same dish: "The shawarma technique—grilling a vertical stack of meat slices and cutting it off as it cooks—first appeared in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in the form of döner kebab,[1][14][15] which both the Greek gyros and the Levantine shawarma are derived from." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma