A little piece of Berlin in Seattle: The doner kebab goes Stateside

By Chris Melzer Aug 11, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Seattle - It's a standard doner kebab, juicy meat shavings, fresh salad and crispy flat Turkish bread, plus a spicy sauce - a lot of spicy sauce. But it has landed in Seattle in Washington State on the western seaboard of the United States, where an American with links to Germany is trying to teach his countrymen about a new kind of fast food.

The kebab outlet, called The Berliner, is probably the westernmost doner joint in the world, and the connection to Germany is clear. Victor found out about the doner in Germany, where the large Turkish population has helped popularize the snack to the extent that it is now the most popular German fast food.

'I had a licence from a fast food chain, but I wanted to make my own stuff, something different,' Victor says. 'The question was: What tastes good and is missing in Seattle?' There was no easy answer in a city with immigrants from all over the world, but then Victor went to Berlin and found out about the doner.

'It was just great! Fresh, juicy and really good-tasting. And you can find them on every street corner in Berlin.'

Transferring the doner to Seattle presented some obstacles. 'You can't find the right bread here. After a long search I found a baker who bakes it specially for me. And he does it well. It tastes better than some in Berlin,' Victor says.

The huge doner spits of meat also do not exist in the state of Washington. 'So we made them ourselves, but smaller, because the law here lays down that it has to be used up within half a day at the most.'

Victor began experimenting to achieve the right doner result. 'My God, but that took a while. I really wasted a lot of meat - well it wasn't really wasted. My friends had to try it out.'

Decorating the outlet was the easy part. The 'i' in Berliner is formed by the famous television tower, one of the German capital's landmarks. The walls are covered with pictures of the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Wall complete with graffiti.

The various kinds of doner all have names - a concession to US ways and a departure from Berlin custom - like The Mehringdamm, named after a broad Berlin thoroughfare, or The Hot Kreuzberger, in reference to a trendy part of the city. They cost 6.49 dollars.

'The customers immediately saw that it was German, but they weren't expecting doner. They had never seen doner. Some left because they'd been expecting German wurst,' Victor says.

But slowly the doner joint took off, without advertising. One of the local papers reported 'an inimitable taste experience in our city'. The tasty sauce ensured that it wasn't merely another boring Greek gyros, the paper said.

Victor's customers are homesick Turks, German tourists and primarily office workers from the area. 'I know doner from Berlin,' says Brad, who grew up in still-divided Berlin as the son of a US airline pilot and who is now a regular. 'I was sceptical at first, but now I'm a complete fan. It really tastes like the real thing.'

Chris, a lawyer, expected German beer, but found the food to his taste. 'Very fresh and with lots of taste,' he said