“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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1372 months ago

    the currywurst — fried veal sausage topped with ketchup and curry powder

    Who the hell told this person that Currywurst is made with veal? The standard is pork. And it’s grilled, not fried.

      • @Evotech
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        252 months ago

        Common to write a paragraph and some keywords yourself and have an LLMfill out the rest I’m afraid

    • @[email protected]
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      82 months ago

      Beef sausage is the norm for currywurst in the Frankfurt area, but pork is much more common everywhere else.

    • @raspberriesareyummy
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      32 months ago

      thank you - I came to comment an “ahahahaha” on that. As if anyone would put (expensive) veal into even a beef sausage…

    • @FooBarrington
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      22 months ago

      In my experience, fried is much more common than grilled, which makes sense - for a tiny fast-food place, a frying station is much more useful and cheaper to operate.

        • @FooBarrington
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          62 months ago

          I’ve seen it in Cologne and the region around it, in Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and a bunch of small cities. Where do you live that you only ever see them grilled? I’ve only really seen them grilled in outdoors scenarios.

          Or could you be confusing frying in fat (“frittieren”) with frying in a pan (“braten”)? I’m talking about a heated metal surface with a thin film of oil.

          • @[email protected]
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            42 months ago

            When talking about fast food, frying usually refers to deep frying. I wanted to throw nasty words at you because obviously Currywurst isn’t deep fried.

            • @FooBarrington
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              12 months ago

              What word would you have me use to say not grilling, and not deep frying?

              • @[email protected]
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                12 months ago

                I’d call it grilling to be honest. It kinda looks like a teppanyaki, which is a form of grill.

                • @FooBarrington
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                  22 months ago

                  But grilling is over open flame. When I’m frying something in a frying pan, I’m not grilling it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  12 months ago

                  Teppanyaki literally means “iron pan”. It’s frying, not grilling, the difference is that frying involves contact to a hot surface, while grilling primarily works via infrared radiation, at a distance. Also, air, but that’s not the primary factor otherwise we’d be talking baking: You can absolutely grill something over hot coals on the beach while the wind is carrying all the hot air away. Baking btw works perfectly fine for sausages.

                  You’ll see that kind of thing being called a Grillplatte in German but that’s because it’s (at least traditionally) an iron plate you put on a grill, not because you’re grilling stuff with it. Culinary and fixture lingo don’t match up in this case.

          • @[email protected]
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            -12 months ago

            No frying pans anywhere, either. That would be very impractical in the standard sausage-and-fries shop that sells currywurst.

            • @FooBarrington
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              2 months ago

              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.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        For a tiny place, that is, a mobile shack barely large enough to house one, a gas grill makes sense. No need for electrical anything as fridges can also run on gas, and grilling sausages gives way better results than frying.

        • @FooBarrington
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          2 months ago

          It might be, but it’s not what I’ve seen. IME it’s very rare to have an open grill. Much more common is a metal plate heated by gas, but that’s frying.

  • @[email protected]
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    502 months ago

    I remember 3,50€ from fucking 2007. They make it seem like the prices have gone up from that within the last two years. Meat is way too cheap anyway.

    • @ichbinjasokreativ
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      372 months ago

      In 2017 I could still find Döner for 4€ in Nürnberg. Now it’s 7,50€.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        Which is a clear sign for Döner being consistent with overall rise of prices due to inflationin the last 20 years. Maybe it has been too cheap for too long. Bad working conditions, a lot or family business where family members “help out” to deal with the heavy competition etc.

        • @WhatAmLemmy
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          -82 months ago

          Lol. This fuckin guy actually believes the spoils are trickling down to workers and small businesses! I have a bridge you might be interested in…

    • volvoxvsmarla
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      212 months ago

      Meat is way too cheap anyway.

      This is why I hate that they are focussing on Döner and are even asking for a Dönerpreisbremse. For all I care, discuss falafels, french fries, anything that has no meat in it. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but it is hilarious to complain that a meat based dish should still be the “easily affordable” fast food for everyone. In 2024. Come on.

    • @FooBarrington
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      82 months ago

      I paid between 2,50€ and 4€ around 2016-2018 (depending on the city and place). It’s far more recent than 2007.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 months ago

      Meat is way too cheap anyway.

      What do you mean “meat is way too cheap”? Are you a kebab joint owner?

      • @[email protected]
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        392 months ago

        From an ecological point, meat is too cheap as long as the general population can afford to eat it more than once or twice per week. Meat is very ineffective to produce, requiring vast amounts of water and cattle feed to be grown. It was never supposed to be a three times a day staple of every meal, and the fact that we have normalized it to that point is really unhealthy both for ourselves and the planet we are ruining to keep production going.

        • @chonglibloodsport
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          -52 months ago

          What do you mean “never supposed to”? The world wasn’t designed.

          Anyway, meat can still be cheap without the intensive factory farming practices in the US. Chickens are very cheap to raise on pasture and produce much tastier meat as well! They can be watered with well water and supplemented with minimal grain feed.

          • @[email protected]
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            102 months ago

            Factory farming is the only efficient way to have meat for billions of people. About 95% of bovine meat is factory farmed. Its impossible to turn the entire industry free range, and it can’t be done for cheaper.

            It also requires raising about 50 chickens before a person’s economy of scale can compete with the sticker cost at the supermarket.

      • @[email protected]
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        202 months ago

        At least in the US there are a number of subsidies that help to keep meat prices low, which isn’t really great because it increases demand for one of the more environmentally damaging foods to produce.

      • @[email protected]
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        132 months ago

        A pack of dried beef is like 4 euros where i live. The vegan alternative is smoked beets, which basically tastes the same but comes in a smaller packet and is like 8.50. So you’re telling me it’s cheaper to raise a cow, feed it, make sure it doesn’t move too much, drive it somewhere to get killed, get it butchered, and smoked and dried than slice beets and smoke it?

        • @[email protected]
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          72 months ago

          Could it be that the beets are too expensive, by which I really mean that the proletariat is exploited and denied the benefits of the surplus gained by their increasing productivity.

      • @ABCDE
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        22 months ago

        I guess the quality of the meat they’re produced en masse.

    • @norimee
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      52 months ago

      2007?

      I payed 4€ at my local döner shop before the pandemic. Last year it was 6 and last week i payed 8€ for it.

      Doubled the price since 2020!!

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      2007 I paid 2,50€ as a student. Yes meat is way too cheap but today I even pay at least 7€ for a vegetarian one.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 months ago

      There was one place where i was living where you could get one for 2.90€ as recently as 2018. It wasn’t the best, but it was great value.

      I moved around then, so I have no idea what it costs now.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      I remember 3.50 around 2010 in some parts of Berlin. In Munich it was over 5. Pre pandemic it was around 7 and now it’s 8 or 9 (haven’t bought one in a while).

      Prices for Dürüm, BTW, the clearly superior kebab delivery mechanism.

  • Karyoplasma
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    292 months ago

    When I was a teenager, every wednesday I went to the movies next town over because they were showing a random movie. I was not allowed to drive, so I took the train. Ticket was 1,30€. Today, the ticket costs 5,90€. “Inflation”.