From Ottoman Empire to Berlin streets: The evolution of the döner kebab

In 1990, as globalisation entered its swaggering adolescence and McDonald's made its Moscow debut, a peculiar debate unfolded at Oxford’s venerable Symposium on Food and Cookery.

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Textile specialist Robert Chenciner presented a paper titled The Bayeux Tapestry Shish Kebab Mystery, questioning the authenticity of the famous Norman embroidery. His evidence: a panel depicting Norman knights grilling meat skewers over an open fire.To Chenciner, this was culinary anachronism. He argued that Hastings, the English town depicted in the tapestry, didn't have kebab stalls in 1066. The shish kebab, as the story went, didn’t reach France until much later, brought by Ottoman envoys to Versailles in the 18th century. French academics were scandalised. Julia Child, ever the culinary populist, applauded as if she'd just rediscovered creme brûlée. Curators at the Bayeux Museum, however, pushed back. The issue, they suggested, wasn’t with the tapestry — it was with the kebab itself. Was this iconic snack even Turkish in origin?