Yeah, this is a nice selection of European cities to compare!
Having lived in Berlin and Stockholm (and a few other cities), I'd say Stockholm has by far the worst kebab options of all places I've lived, while Berlin was the best one.
I'm curious whether this is reflected in local reviews, or whether the locals just lower or heighten their standards based on the what the average food quality is like.
Kebabs are one of the foods (like Chinese cuisine) that morphs depending on a combination of which kebab-eating group brought it to the country, and local cuisine.
I'm not sure about Stockholm, or Sweden in general, when it comes to kebabs, but kebabs in Norway bear little resemblance to the kebabs I get in London. And the UK now has a chain serving "German" kebabs, which again are significantly different from the kebabs we get from Turkish takeaway places and restaurants here... It's not that they're better or worse - I might crave one or the other depending on what I'm in the mood for, as they're almost different dishes.
So, comparing cities against each other is a lot harder than comparing differences in local opinion by location within a city.
Doner kebap was invented in Ottoman empire in 19th century. It was also usually eaten inside bread.
Turkish immigrants introduced it in Germany in 70's. However it is true that the current version of Doner kebap in Germany is quite different than Turkish counterparts. (Sauces, toppings etc)
This is plainly false. Doner was being served in both sandwich and wrapped forms in Turkey well before the 70's. It was one of my grandfather's favorite foods growing up in Ankara in the 40's, and I've got family photos with street vendors selling it on the streets of Istanbul in the 60s.
It is true that in Turkey, you'll find the Döner Iskendar (cubes of bread, covered in döner meat, covered in sauce, on a plate) as a very common dish, but to claim that the street food variant was new in the 70's is insane. There are a ton of people alive today who can refute that, trivially.
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.
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.
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.
"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).
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.
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."
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.
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.
