How did the döner kebab become Germany’s most popular snack?

I learned pretty early on in our relationship that my husband’s favorite food is döner, but only later did I figure out that his affection for the dish was more of an obsession. Although I’d devoured plenty of late-night kebabs around Europe during my backpacker days, it wasn’t until my first trip with Philipp to his home country of Germany that I gorged on so much döner I was ready to become a vegetarian.

Now that we live in the US where döner is hard to come by, my husband’s cravings for the sandwich have intensified. I recently heard Philipp call out for it in his sleep. While I don’t share his obsession with kebab, I certainly understand it. Döner is (usually) chicken or veal roasted on a vertical spit, then shaved away and served in a bun with crunchy cabbage, various fresh vegetables, and one of several different sauces. When washed down with an Ayran (a salty Turkish yogurt drink), there’s no snack more satisfying.

On our latest trip to Germany to spend the holidays with my in-laws and visit friends, Philipp and I had to get our döner fix. As we drove south from his hometown near the French border, then eventually some 500 miles up to Berlin in the northwest, we took regular döner stops to sample the sandwich in each region.

The sandwich is Germany’s most popular street food dish (recently stealing the title from currywurst), with around 18,000 shops in the country that together sell millions of kebabs a day.

While I left Germany ready for another döner break, I also left with a newfound appreciation for the Turkish-German street food, and above all, the mesh of cultures it represents.

For Philipp, Ilan’s Restaurant in the southwestern town of Bruchmühlbach-Miesau makes the best döner kebab in the world. My husband is famous at Ilan’s—not only for his regular business over the years, but also because in high school he would call in döner delivery when the school lunch was unappetizing…

At this particular shop, döner is made from chicken and dressed with lettuce, red and white cabbage, thick slices of tomato and cucumber, a yogurt garlic sauce, one pickled peperoncino, and a whole block of feta-like cheese. Because I have a gluten intolerance, I enjoy my döner in box form: Fries, meat, and all the toppings in a paper pail.

On this trip, we spent the first week catching up with family and downing Ilan döner before hitting the road. In Freiburg, not far from the city’s imposing 13th-century cathedral, we found one of the few kebab shops open on a Sunday. Even if the door was still locked when we approached, the shop owner ushered us inside, as it was so cold our breath almost crystallized. Inside, we warmed up with tea and ate an excellent, but different, version of kebab.

On this one, there was no peperoncino, no cucumber and no white cabbage, but the bread was toasted until crunchy and topped with sesame seeds and the flavorful meat flecked with parsley—a solid 8/10, we decided. 

The next day, on our way to Munich, we stopped in Konstanz (Constance) on the lake Germans call Bodensee. There, we wandered through the town’s Christmas market, and just behind a holly-draped glühwein stall, found the next stop on our döner tour. In an upstairs seating area that looked out on the market, we decided that this kebab’s fresh vegetable medley was its redeeming quality, while the meat was cold and chewy.

While tensions persist between Turkish Germans and their fellow countrymen, food can be a gateway to greater cultural understanding.

There’s a saying in German my husband uses often: Döner macht schöner. Döner makes you better-looking. If that’s the case, then the German population must be reaching peak attractiveness. The sandwich is Germany’s most popular street food dish (recently stealing the title from currywurst), with around 18,000 shops in the country that together sell millions of kebabs a day.

You can trace German döner back to the traditional Turkish version, served sliced on a plate and accompanied by lavash bread. It was this döner that Turkish “guest workers” brought to Germany in the 1960s when they immigrated to help the country meet its post-war labor needs. When Germany passed a family reunification policy that allowed workers to bring their families to join them in Germany, Turkish communities formed and forever altered German society.

To better understand this merging of cultures, I spoke with Erkan Emre, a German born to Turkish immigrants in the 1970s. Emre now owns five döner kebab shops in New York City. “They were expecting machines,” Emre says of Germany in the guest worker era. “But what arrived ended up being humans, and humans have needs and longings.”

It was those human needs and longings that introduced döner to Germany. While several different Turkish immigrants claim to have made the first-ever döner kebab, Kadir Nurman, who operated a döner stand in Berlin, is considered the official inventor. The döner that millions of Germans enjoy today is different from the original—out of convenience, döner became a sandwich, and soon, popular demand led to a choice of herb, spicy, garlic yogurt, or white sauces.

Döner has now made it full circle, according to Şivan Gergersoy who lived in Munich for 15 years before opening a shop called Berlin Döner in Adana, Turkiye. “People here love döner German style,” he says.

As we sped down the autobahn, glimpsing countryside villages cloaked with fog, I mused over how my husband’s favorite sandwich has transformed in Germany.

At Sultan in Nuremberg (where, dönered-out, I ate lentil soup), the buns were long and thin rather than the round ones we’d come across in Munich, and the sauces differed from those available in the southwest. I’d heard rumors from my sister-in-law of a shop in Stuttgart that sneaks potatoes into their döner and saw gemüse döner filled with roasted veggies in Berlin, where kebab comes in triangular slices of pide bread.

The döner evolution continues at Emre’s Kotti Berliner Döner Kebab shops in New York, where he offers döner burgers and bowls that are popular with Americans—representing what Emre calls a “mosaic of different cultures.” While tensions persist between Turkish Germans and their fellow countrymen, food can be a gateway to greater cultural understanding.

Our road trip ended in Berlin, the birthplace of döner, where Philipp and I strolled through Neukölln in search of a döner shop in one of Berlin’s most diverse immigrant neighborhoods. Although the restaurant we found was out of gemüse that day, learning that the vegetable-laden döner trend started in the last two decades made me excited for the sandwich’s future. As Emre puts it, “I think the chapter on the döner kebab has not ended… it’s maybe even just beginning.” 

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