London's Most Kinda-Authentic Kebab

A wrap to remember (and then forget immediately)

#14. Doner Kebab

I’d never had a doner kebab before.

It had never appealed to me, even though my friends ate them all the time (I suppose they are very Moorish). My main exposure had been, every Friday night, seeing a Zorba’s kebab (and cheesy chips) smeared along Reading’s Friar Street, half-digested. At the back of my mind, every time I’d clock that elephant’s leg of mushed-up offal rotating in the window under the banner of ‘doner kebab’, I wondered, well, who was the donor and what on earth happened to them? You know, this one time, a man disposed of his murder victim by grinding her into kebab meat.

Anyway, I had to think of fifty-two new things to do in a year (I mean for God’s sake, eating a kebab as a new adventure, this really is rock bottom), so I got myself onto Google and hunted down the best damn doner kebab in London. I found the perfect place – it was in Mayfair, and it did pan-seared venison on a stone-baked sourdough flatbread with a reduced mayonnaise jus for just £42.

‘No,’ said my friend, who loves kebabs, and often gets cramp in his left arm. ‘It has to be authentic.’

I found the place nearest to me. Google reviews gave it one star. Too authentic. Instead, I settled on a place in Shoreditch with a knackered old bus stop outside the door and dirty plastic tables inside. Just authentic enough. Though, it was called London Doner Kebab and let me tell you, the guy behind the counter wasn’t from London and he wasn’t Turkish either. I hoped I would at least get a kebab.

I was offered the choice of ‘chicken’ or ‘meat’. I knew better than to ask what ‘meat’ meant and why chicken didn’t count. Having chosen ‘meat’, I was offered ‘salad and sauce’, the lack of specifics failing to inspire my taste buds.

The hirsute man popped round the back to prepare my meat (don’t be childish.). I could hear whirring and whizzing not unlike a dentist’s drill. He returned from his den with the meat and spent an age gingerly assembling the kebab with the salad and the sauce, wrapping it into a thick cylinder not unlike a [MEMBERS’ JOKE BELOW THE PAYWALL 👇] (I assume). He then carefully arranged everything on a tray, like a Mondrian painting, cutlery perfectly parallel to a napkin folded neatly into a triangle. The kebab came as a wrap. I had expected a Styrofoam box. I thought better of texting my friend with the cramps in his left arm, lest he deem it too inauthentic.

I cleansed my palette with the Hayat PH8 bottled water from Turkey, before starting with the pommes frites as an amuse-bouche. They were plasticky with bubbles, like a troll doll that had been left on a lightbulb. They had been fried to death and were totally and completely and irrevocably unseasoned. How can you make chips taste bad? I put them to one side – and readied myself for the main event…

Flattened sausage. It’s basically just a flattened sausage.

The wrap was completely crammed full of meat, which was gristly and chewy like an old boot. I liked ‘sauce’, but the meat left an unpleasant aftertaste at the back of my throat, like you get with food fried in seed oils. I ate a quarter of it and wished I hadn’t.

I picked up my wrap and made my way out of the door. ‘Thanks mate, got to walk and eat,’ I said to the artisan behind the counter. He had spent so long, with such an eye to detail, arranging my food, the food of his only customer, that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings (or end up being minced into kebab meat).

I walked a few steps down the street - far enough that he wouldn’t hear the hefty thump as I lobbed it into a black London bin.

My wife was making quinoa anyway.

What’s a foodstuff that’s popular but you’d never eat? I know someone who’s never been to a KFC, if you can believe that. Never!

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