In 1990, as globalisation entered its swaggering adolescence and McDonald’s made its Moscow debut, a peculiar debate unfolded at Oxford’s venerable Symposium on Food and Cookery. Textile specialist Robert Chenciner presented a paper titled The Bayeux Tapestry Shish Kebab Mystery, questioning the authenticity of the famous Norman embroidery. His evidence: a panel depicting Norman knights grilling meat skewers over an open fire.
To Chenciner, this was culinary anachronism. He argued that Hastings, the English town depicted in the tapestry, didn’t have kebab stalls in 1066. The shish kebab, as the story went, didn’t reach France until much later, brought by Ottoman envoys to Versailles in the 18th century. French academics were scandalised. Julia Child, ever the culinary populist, applauded as if she’d just rediscovered crème brûlée. Curators at the Bayeux Museum, however, pushed back. The issue, they suggested, wasn’t with the tapestry — it was with the kebab itself. Was this iconic snack even Turkish in origin?
Few foods inspire as much cultural pride or culinary debate as the kebab. Across millennia and continents, variations on the simple concept of skewered, fire-cooked meat have emerged: satay in Indonesia, souvlaki in Greece, and tikka in the Indian subcontinent.
Cooking in the Bayeux Tapestry (Wikimedia Commons)
But nowhere is the debate more intense than in Germany, where the döner kebab is practically a national dish — unofficially, if not legally. German streets are dotted with kebab shops offering a greasy, comforting antidote to late-night regrets. According to market research by Germany’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Germans consume over two million döner kebabs daily, fuelling a €7 billion industry. Yet this beloved snack has become the focal point of a bitter feud between Berlin and Ankara.
For Germany, the döner is more than fast food; it’s a symbol of multicultural identity, woven into the fabric of its streets and social life. For Turkey, it’s about cultural pride and culinary integrity. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that food, as much as politics or art, tells a story — of migration, adaptation, and the ever-shifting boundaries of culture.
And so, as Europe debates what makes a kebab truly döner, the age-old question lingers: who, if anyone, owns the right to claim it?
The kebab story
Though often attributed to Turkish ingenuity, the kebab’s origin remains contested. Arabic, Persian, and Central Asian cuisines influenced its development. However, while variations of skewered meat exist globally, the Turkish kebab, or kebap, holds a unique place, intertwined with the Ottoman Empire’s legacy and the evolution of Middle Eastern cuisine.
According to food historian Mary Işın, the Turkish kebab’s roots trace back to a 1433 account by Bertrandon de la Broquière, a French traveller who described Turkish nomads roasting sheep on spits and slicing the cooked surface. “This method of eating roasted meat – taking slices as they cook – reflects a practical approach for travellers. It’s easy to see how this evolved into the horizontal spits depicted in Ottoman miniatures,” Işın, the author of Bountiful Empire: History of Ottoman Cuisine (2018) told indianexpress.com.
The earliest written mention of döner kebab doesn’t appear until 1908, but the practice of layering meat on horizontal spits dates to the 17th century. Two miniature paintings in an Ottoman translation of the Shahnameh, an epic poem written by Persian poet Fardowsi, depict kebabs as central to outdoor feasts. Later, the iconic vertical spit emerged in kebab houses, likely as a space-saving innovation. By 1853, English photographer James Robertson captured an Istanbul street vendor carving meat from a vertical spit, a precursor to the modern döner kebab.
The kebab’s versatility has also contributed to its longevity. In Ottoman cuisine, kebab was any meat cooked slowly, whether roasted, grilled, or prepared in a tandır (clay oven). Ottoman elites savoured elaborate dishes like tandır kebabı, while urban middle classes enjoyed affordable skewers of şiş kebabı. Yet, as Işın explains, “Many kebabs were tied to professional cooks and communal settings, home preparation was rare due to the resources and skill required.”
Religion shaped kebab preparation as well. Turkish kebabs have traditionally adhered to halal practices, with meat slaughtered under Islamic law. As Engin Akin notes in Essential Turkish Cuisine (2015), the preparation often involved a spiritual dimension, with imams reciting verses from the Quran during slaughter.
What began as a humble spit-roast transformed into a global symbol of Turkish culinary identity, paving the way for adaptations like Germany’s beloved döner kebab.
As Işın notes, the modern döner has strayed from its origins. “In the 1970s, döner was always lamb. Today, beef dominates because people believe lamb is greasy. The simple onions once served alongside have given way to tomatoes and peppers,” she remarked.
Döner kebab’s evolution
The rise of the döner kebab as a cultural and culinary emblem in Germany is deeply intertwined with the history of Turkish migration. In 1961, West Germany signed a recruitment agreement with Turkey to address labour shortages during its economic boom. Young men from rural Turkey, known as Gastarbeiter (guest workers), migrated in large numbers to work in industries like construction and manufacturing. As economic challenges persisted back home, many extended their stays, and by the early 1970s, Turks became Germany’s largest immigrant group.
The döner kebab’s evolution into a portable street food staple is widely attributed to Kadir Nurman, a Turkish immigrant in Berlin. In the early 1970s, Nurman began serving shaved meat, salad, and sauces wrapped in flatbread, catering to the fast-paced lifestyle of Berliners. While the idea of assembling a kebab into a sandwich format wasn’t entirely novel, Nurman is credited with introducing this version to German street food culture. In 2011, the Association of Turkish Döner Manufacturers formally recognised his contribution.
A donor kebab stall in Berlin (AP)
Over time, the döner kebab has undergone significant changes. According to Manik Soi, a Mumbai-based chef, “Initially, döner kebabs in Germany were prepared with sliced veal, but by the 1980s, demand led to shifts in production.” Soi says that subsequently minced meat became common, allowing the classic döner cone to be mass-produced. Concerns over quality and cost, alongside health scares like mad cow disease, prompted a rise in chicken döner kebabs.
“Turkish Germans played a pivotal role in the industrialisation of döner production,” says Soi with “entrepreneurs like Remzi Kaplan, the son of Gastarbeiter, turning döner into big business.” Kaplan Döner Production, one of the industry’s largest players, expanded beyond Germany, leveraging lower production costs in countries like Poland.
Kebabs across cultures
In any conversation about the origin of the kebab, or food in general, it’s worth noting how migratory patterns and cultures influenced their development in the food that we see today. The primitive döner may have originated in Turkey to the best of our knowledge, but its composition and salient features were influenced by traders and cultures that passed through the land of the Turks.
By the Middle Ages, Constantinople had emerged as a global hub of trade, the largest of its kind on the European continent. It served as a bustling crossroads of commerce, exchanging both rare treasures and everyday goods with distant lands like China, while also anchoring trade routes closer to home — connecting with the Rus, the Caliphate, and the Western world. Within this magnificent ‘Queen of Cities,’ a vibrant and eclectic cuisine blossomed. Rooted in Roman and Greek culinary traditions, it was elevated by the bold flavours of exotic spices and condiments sourced from far corners of the earth, creating a rich tapestry of tastes that truly embodied its cosmopolitan spirit. The spices used in early kebab recipes likely originated in India, while the oil used for cooking came from the Levant.
During the Byzantine era, Turkish dining patterns cantered around the home, especially for the rich. Meat was a scarcity so while there were limited street food stall offerings scattered across Constantinople, they largely provided accompaniments to meals, rather than meals themselves. By the Ottoman period, according to food scientist Ali Batu, kebabs were found primarily in the palaces and homes of the rich. In Historical background of Turkish gastronomy from ancient times until today (2018), Batu writes, “Culinary culture of the Ottoman Empire was divided into two: the palace kitchen and the public kitchen.” While the palace kitchens adopted meats such as mutton, veal and duck, and embraced new cuisines, the public kitchens, relied on meals heavy in bread and cereals.
Claudia Roden in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food says that meat had always been labelled in Arabic literature and folklore as food of the rich and aristocratic – a mark of status. For the rest of the populace, meat was a special treat reserved for feast days and festivals.
So how did the kebab come to dominate the streets of Istanbul and beyond?
To answer that, we first have to look at street food patterns. As established, Turkey already had a bazaar culture by the 1800s. However, the food served at those bazaars was for the poor and middle class. This changed, not in Turkey, but in Iran.
The rise of chelow kebab in 19th-century Iran under Nasser al-Din Shah marked a turning point. As Margaret Shaida recounts in The Legendary Cuisine of Persia (2002), the Shah’s fondness for this Azari specialty led to the establishment of a restaurant near Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, sparking a nationwide culinary movement. Vendors soon expanded beyond royal grounds, offering kebabs in urban centers as an accessible, street-friendly meal. Unlike most Iranian dishes, chelow kebab thrived in public spaces, becoming the country’s first widespread restaurant staple. As Shaida writes, “Where the court led, the rest of the country followed” and soon chelow kebabs were the dominant street food across Persia.
How that impacted Turkey is an interesting anecdote. A traveller passing through Persia on route to Constantinople had remarked on these household kebabs being sold on the street. The streets of Istanbul were cramped and couldn’t accommodate horizontal skewers, so the vendors opted to flip them up vertically instead. This made it more space conscious, allowed the sauces to drip back into the meat, and distributed the cooking time.
This tradition influenced Turkish migrants in Germany, where döner kebab became a fast-food phenomenon in the 1960s and 70s. Eberhard Seidel, in Döner: A Turkish-German Cultural History (2022), notes that Berlin is now the “döner kebab metropolis of the world.” Originally served on plates, the dish was adapted into a portable snack with local flavours, such as garlic sauce and raw onions, catering to Germany’s urban lifestyle. The döner’s rise reflects both the integration of migrant cuisines and the tensions of cultural adaptation.
The döner kebab’s evolution in Germany exemplifies food’s dual role as a unifier and divider. Celebrated as a symbol of multiculturalism, it also illustrates the power of food to transcend boundaries, adapt to new contexts, and embody both the promise and challenges of migration.
Future Reading
Mary Işın, Bountiful Empire: History of Ottoman Cuisine, Reaktion. Books, 2018
Ali Batu, Historical background of Turkish gastronomy from ancient times until today, Journey of Ehtnic Foods, 2018
Engin Akin, Essential Turkish Cuisine, Stewart Tabori and Chang, 2015
Margaret Shaida, The Legendary Cuisine of Persia, Interlink Pub Group, 2002
Eberhard Seidel, Döner: A Turkish-German Cultural History, März Verlag GmbH, 2022
The origin of the donor kebab has been a matter of contention in Germany and Turkey 
Cooking in the Bayeux Tapestry (Wikimedia Commons)
A donor kebab stall in Berlin (AP)
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