🥙 Döner Without Borders: A Turkish Outdoor Picnic Food Becomes a Global Culinary Icon

🥙 A Spit-Roasted Symbol of Identity, Migration & Multicultural Europe

By Pierre Raffard & curated insights from "The Conversation"

🍽️ Curated and remixed for the culinary curious.

🧭 From Anatolia to Avenue Champs-Élysées: The Döner’s European Odyssey

In the recent decades, döner kebab became the meal of choice for working class and a midnight snack for the masses across Europe.

While most people across several countries in Europe often associate döner kebabs with late-night cravings, their story is far from simple street food folklore. As Raffard explains, this dish’s rise reflects “the astounding success of a food item that, against all odds, became both the laborer’s meal of choice and a midnight snack for the masses.” 🌙🛠️

The doner kebab began humbly in the 1930s, when Greek and Armenian immigrants from Anatolia introduced it to Europe, particularly in France. By the 1980s and 1990s, waves of Turkish immigrants opened kebab shops as an accessible path to economic opportunity. These small, family-run eateries served affordable, satisfying, and halal-friendly meals to students, workers, and late-night diners. 🌯👨‍🍳

🇪🇺 A Dish That Divides: Döner Becomes a Political Hot Potato

In December 2017, the European Parliament's health committee proposed banning phosphate additives in frozen kebab meat for public health reasons.

🧪🚫What followed? An uproar.

🇩🇪 German MEP Renate Sommer called it an attack on small business owners.

🗞️ Media across Europe—Bild, The Guardian, La Repubblica, El País—picked up the controversy.

🎭 The humble kebab had morphed into a symbolic battlefield over labor rights, health policy, and cultural integration.

As Raffard put it:

“Behind the döner kebab’s modest façade, it is in fact a symbol of the social, political and identity issues facing European societies today.”

📊 Döner by the Numbers

➡️ 550+ kebab shops in Paris

➡️ 17,000+ kebab-selling businesses in the UK

➡️ 2 million kebabs consumed daily in Germany (2017)

And all this without help from McDonald’s-style corporate domination. The döner’s spread has been powered by the ingenuity of independent vendors responding to real-time shifts in Europe’s taste buds.

🧃 Gyro, Shawarma, Al Pastor: A Global Spit Roast Family

The döner kebab’s relatives span the globe:

🇬🇷 Gyro in Greece

🇱🇧 Shawarma in the Arab and Armenian world

🇲🇽 Al pastor in Spain and Mexico

Same vertical rotisserie technique, infinite cultural interpretations. 🌐🔥

This family of foods showcases how one core preparation technique adapts into wildly different expressions—flavored by local palates and identity politics.

💬 “Without Us, No Döner Kebabs!”

As Ayşe Çağlar wrote in her study McDoener, the kebab became a rallying cry for Germany’s Turkish community. Slogans from 1980s Berlin protests shouted:

“Ohne Ausländer, kein Döner!”(Without foreigners, no döner!)

For many, the kebab represents integration through food—a flavorful proof that cultures can coexist at the counter. 🧕🍴👨‍🎓

🛑 But Not Everyone’s Eating

Opposition to kebab culture has simmered under the surface.

🇮🇹 In 2009, cities like Lucca and Padua tried banning “foreign-looking eateries.”

🇫🇷 In 2014, Béziers’ mayor declared war on kebab shops cluttering the historic center.

These acts, veiled as efforts to protect “culinary heritage,” actually reflected a fear of Islamisation and ethnic change—making doner kebabs a lightning rod in the ongoing debate about immigration, nationalism, and urban identity.

🧠 Scholar, Not Chef: Why Raffard Matters

Pierre Raffard isn’t making kebabs—but he’s doing something equally vital:

🌍 Mapping how migration redefines food systems

📚 Teaching how dishes like döner kebab evolve into symbols of belonging, marginalization, and globalized identity

🎤 Delivering talks like his 2017 Istanbul lecture on doner’s path from Turkish migrant food to Michelin-starred menus

His 2019 essay in The Conversation, “The döner kebab, an unlikely symbol of European identity,” is essential reading for anyone curious about the deeper layers in what we eat.

🎯 Final Bite: What the Döner Kebab Teaches Us

The döner isn’t just tasty. It’s telling. About Europe. About who belongs and who doesn’t. About how a sandwich can become a mirror of political fear, community pride, and cultural reinvention.

The döner kebab is more than just a late-night street food extremely popular in Europe—it’s a cultural touchstone that continues to evolve across generations and borders.

As of late 2024, the German Döner Kebab (GDK) chain operates 146 locations across the United Kingdom.

Erkan Emre, a German born to Turkish immigrants owns five döner kebab shops in New York City.

Zanny Steffgen's culinary road trip across Germany illustrates that the döner’s rise from humble Anatolian origins to Germany’s most popular street food reflects not only shifting tastes but also the lasting impact of Turkish immigrant communities since the 1960s.

In Turkey, döner has traditionally been served on pide bread, soaked in tomato sauce, topped with a generous pour of melted butter, and accompanied by a side of yogurt—all presented as a plated dish in specialty restaurants.

Originally introduced by “guest workers” who arrived to meet Germany’s postwar labor demands, the döner evolved from a plated dish in Turkish specialty restaurants into a convenient street-food sandwich—and quickly became a local favorite. With over 40,000 döner shops across Germany and countless regional variations, the döner kebab now represents a rich cultural exchange—what one restaurateur calls “a mosaic of different cultures.”

Despite tensions around integration, the döner kebab has become a flavorful symbol of how food can bridge differences and rewrite the narrative of belonging in modern Europe.

So next time you bite into that pita stuffed with juicy, spiced meat…✨ Remember: You’re not just having a snack—you’re tasting history, geography, and politics all at once.

📍 Who Is Pierre Raffard?

Pierre Raffard (center) is a French food geographer and historian who teaches at Sciences Po.

He’s not your typical chef, food critic, or restaurateur—Pierre Raffard 🇫🇷 is a French food geographer and historian who teaches at Sciences Po and specializes in topics like:

🍽️ The geopolitics of food

🌍 Culinary globalization & appropriation

✈️ The role of migration in spreading cuisines

Sciences Po (short for Institut d'études politiques de Paris, or Paris Institute of Political Studies; 🏛️ founded 1872) is one of France’s most prestigious higher education institutions, known for its excellence in the social sciences—particularly political science, international relations, law, economics, history, and sociology.

His focus? Exploring how dishes like the döner kebab travel, transform, and transcend borders to become icons of national identity, urban culture, and yes—even political battlegrounds.

Text adapted with insights from Pierre Raffard’s writing and “The Conversation” (May 2019), translated by Alice Heathwood & Leighton Walter Kille.

Pierre Raffard, Enseignant chercheur, co-directeur Food 2.0 Lab, Sorbonne Universités.