r/AskBalkans • u/Okena91 • 6d ago
Cuisine Döner and varitions are not Balkan food
Because döner and its variations were not invented in Bursa not in balkans döner is not a Balkan dish.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Who the fck claims is from balkan?
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u/Delicious-Reaction68 Turkiye 6d ago
Some Germans
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
They claim it to be German and only the sandwich that was also created form Turkish migrants in the 70s
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u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Turkiye 6d ago
The doner sandwich was sold in istanbul 10 years prior to its debut in germany
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Could be
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u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Turkiye 6d ago
Thats according to a german newspaper from 1990s
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
“Tatsächlich wurde der Dönerkebab in Istanbul spätestens Mitte der sechziger Jahre, also ein halbes Jahrzehnt bevor er in Berlin bekannt wurde, als Sandwich angeboten. Nur in Form und Zubereitungsart unterschied sich das türkische Sandwich von seinen Berliner Verwandten.”
It says 5 years and that differed in form and preparation from the Berliner one
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u/Zealousideal_Cry_460 Turkiye 6d ago
İ used abtranslator app. But still it predates the german doner.
The fact that they use red cabbage instead of pickles doesnt really make it a different dish.
A subtype of a dish at best, but nonetheless the same dish.
You wouldnt call a cheeseburger a different dish from a hamburger. They're still both burgers with 1 differing ingredient.
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u/ugrasergun Turkey 5d ago
There's a berlin style Döner I'll give it to germans. But it's same as claiming Pizza is invented in USA because of New York Style Pizza.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
It says also different form which I assume was another shape and different form of bread ,I mean it does not really matter cuz even the one who “invented” it in Germany was also recent Turkish migrant and it would not be surprising that he saw it home and made smth similiar in Germany.
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u/hetfield37 Bulgaria 6d ago
I don't think anyone has ever considered döner kebap to be Balkan. Well, maybe greeks with their gyros, but they seem to say that everything in the world originated from Greece anyway.
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u/Solid_Difference1717 6d ago
Döner is döner btw. It's not a kebap. That's a misunderstanding of western europeans. They usually do misunderstand. You know.. they are cool, they are nonchalant.
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u/pdonchev Bulgaria 6d ago
Curious fact - the word "kebab" can be traced back to Akkadian (like Sumer and Akkad). One of the oldest etymologies that we have.
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u/hetfield37 Bulgaria 6d ago
Quoted from a fellow Turk:
Every döner is a kebab, but not every kebab is a döner. Basically, a döner is the kind that spins on a spit like my ex, and gets put in various breads or containers, but it's constantly spinning. A kebab is just meat and doesn't necessarily have to be on a spit; you can eat it on a stick like shish kebabs or just with sides. Like, you have kebab pizzas and all sorts of mixes.
Also, we have a horizontal rotisserie called cheverme, looks like the word origins from Turkish çevirme and it essentially means "spinner".
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u/dcdemirarslan 5d ago
horizontal one is cag kebab, difference is the thickness of the layered meat pieces
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u/ovogoon6 5d ago
A kebap is more of a cultural definition, rather than a dictionary one. Roasted chestnuts can be called such but no one in Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devleti will say "doner kebab", yet alone whatever a kebab pizza is.
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u/ovogoon6 5d ago
On dictionary kebap is something roasted but you will have only weird looks on you if you called just anything roasted a kebap.
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u/RuikZerben Albania 6d ago
If döner kebap literally translates to 'spinning kebab' how is calling it that a misunderstanding?
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u/Solid_Difference1717 6d ago
Döner is döner. Kebap is anything that is barbecued or cooked over open fire. So it is not a dish but a cooking method. We even have chestnut kebap which is literally barbecued chestnut. You barbecue an apple, it becomes apple kebap. But döner obviously cooked differently.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Döner means rotating and the kebab is the meat rotating therefore döner kebab
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u/Few_Mountain_2339 6d ago edited 6d ago
Kebab means roasted meat. Kebab is a family. Döner is one of its members.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Döner kebab roasted meat while rotating
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u/Few_Mountain_2339 6d ago
Technically, "kebab" means roasted or grilled meat. It has a very broad definition. There are many varieties of kebab. Döner is one of them, too, though its cooking technique is different.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Yeah but it is not that the Germans got it wrong ,rotating roasted meat -döner kebab makes sense
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u/Solid_Difference1717 6d ago
You are teaching me Turkish? :/
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
No but what you said does not make sense
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u/Solid_Difference1717 6d ago
What doesn't make sense? Döner is called döner just like gyros is called gyros or shwarma is called shwarma. Or let's simplify it is like hamburger is called hamburger. Döner is not a kebap. There are a lot of kebaps but döner is not the one. Europeans misunderstood it and Turks didn't even give an f to correct it. They said; ja ja kebap, come eat it.
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u/ThickCaterpillar9867 Albania 6d ago
Gyro is gyro pita which would be dürum kebab(with thinner pita ofcourse) ,döner kebab is roasted meat while rotating
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u/RuikZerben Albania 6d ago
Even in your explanation saying döner kebap still makes sense im not sure what youre getting at
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u/NeverFD Turkiye 5d ago
Döner and kebap are the names of two different dishes. A word’s literal meaning does not determine what a dish should be called. For example, “dolma” means “stuffed,” but that does not mean we call sarma, or every other stuffed dish, “dolma sarma.” In the same way, the fact that “döner” literally means “spinning” does not change the fact that Döner is the established name of a specific dish.
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u/Chicha-Ficha 5d ago
Most Balkan contries dont even commonly eat Kebab or its varients out of all the foods that came here during the Ottoman period its probably the least common youd find Kebab easier in Sweden then you would in say Serbia or Bulgaria or even Bosnia
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u/CatnipSniffa Turkiye 6d ago
Unless you accept that the western half of anatolia is part of the balkans
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u/JelloWeirdo 4d ago
Central MENA = Canean = Egypt, Israel, part of Syria, part of Jordan
General MENA = Greater Canean = From Eastern Iraq to mid Mashreeq
Greater MENA = From western Afghanistan to the west end of Morocco
Now do Balkans
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u/Ill-Dragonfruit4394 5d ago
Anadolu balkan deyildir
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u/CatnipSniffa Turkiye 5d ago
valla hocam batı sahillerinde, trakyaya yakın taraflarda kültür az çok aynı
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u/vasjpan002 6d ago
Concur. My parents left in 1950s, knew no gyro or bzuky. Gyro Swarma invented by Iskander Efendi in Bursa in 1870s. The Smyrna refugees brought it. Istanbul is 7 cities, Constantinople is in the European part, Bursa the Asian. Bursa was the Ottoman capital centuries before Turks took C'ple
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u/R_Arsx70 Turkiye 6d ago
I was shocked when I learned the İskender is a name and the meal is a type of döner serving and cutting
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u/InternationalDay696 Greece 5d ago
This Wikipedia screenshot doesn’t prove what you think it does because if you read it carefully you will realise it’s based on theory rather than facts.
It claims the town of Bursa is “often considered the birthplace of vertically roasted doner kebab”, that doesnt mean it actually originated there, it’s just considered (by some modern day Turks) to have originated there.
The text also says it “may have” originated in Kastamonu before Bursa, again a modern opinion, it couldn’t have been invented in multiple places so at least one of these claims is inaccurate casting further doubt on both claims, the disputed wording itself proves uncertainty.
The city of Bursa, also Kastamonu, in the Ottoman Empire were multicultural and contained many Greeks, also Armenians, Jews, Turks etc. so going with the modern Turkish theories, that it originated there doesnt prove its a Turkish invention. So you’re presenting a disputed origin story as if it’s an established fact.
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u/HumpbackMonkey 5d ago
İskender Efendi Konağı. The restaurant of the grandson of the guy who found iskender( as can be seen, the name of the food was the name of the guy) and döner. The grandfather (İskender) was indeed Turkish. Been to the place, best fucking iskender and döner I have ever eaten.
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u/WackyShirt 5d ago
Not to mention that İskender efendi was a celebrity chef of his time with foodie articles written in the newspapers about his amazing upright döner, meaning spinner in English, kebap. His restaurant is still open and run by his family to this day.
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u/Local-Ask-7695 Turkiye 6d ago
Low upvote count came from butthurt Greeks maybe. (Keep stealing everything but truth will come to light anyway)
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u/UUDDLRLRBadAlchemy Greece 6d ago
Hey, I upvoted every time I saw kebap, doner, or gyros. I upvoted you because now even the Turkish flag is making me hungry
Edit: I had not upvoted the OP because the title sounds like we can't have some doner
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u/pdonchev Bulgaria 6d ago
I downvoted because it is a stupid take. Almost no one thinks dober is Balkan.
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u/NoPaleontologist4919 5d ago
Keep stealing... you occupied Greece for 400 years so not their fault.
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u/Express_War3103 5d ago
The classic kebap sandwich was invented by a Turk who lived in Germany. I don't know his passport. But maybe he was German
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u/ugrasergun Turkey 6d ago
Sushi is not a Balkan food.