“I can still remember when doner kebabs were sold for €3.50,” reminisced one teenager amid calls for a price brake to stop rising kebab costs.
The German capital is the birthplace of that ubiquitous European fast food, the doner kebab, and it shows.
Kebab shops line streets of many German cities, particularly in Berlin, and the scent of roasting, skewered meat is never far off.
Some two-million doner kebabs — meat wrapped in bread, topped with sauces and vegetables — are consumed a day in Germany, according to an industry association, quite a lot for a country of 83 million people. And the doner kebab has even supplanted the old stalwart, the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder — as the most popular fast-food dish in the country, according to a 2022 survey.
No frying pans anywhere, either. That would be very impractical in the standard sausage-and-fries shop that sells currywurst.
You do get that you don’t need a literal frying pan for frying, right? You just need an even metal surface with thin oil coating that’s heated. That’s what 90+% of small fast food shops have.
But you can’t seriously try to tell me that every single Imbiss you’ve ever been to has an open flame grill they use for everything.
Who said anything about open flame? I’d assume most of them are going to use electric grills. No oil involved.
But maybe you can link me a picture of the kind of frying device that you have in mind - maybe we just disagree on whether that’s a grill or a fryer.
I’m thinking of something like this:
(taken from https://www.kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/kochblock-mkn-edelstahl-imbisszeile-braeter-bainmarie-grill-11212/1630405258-87-7107)
They call it a “Bräter”/“Bratfläche”, not a grill. Maybe a better word would have been “roasted”, but “grilled” just isn’t something I’ve seen for normal metal-surface-cooking.