Durum

 It was hard picking just one dish to represent Turkish cuisine in this article. In the end, I went with durum for the following reasons: A) It’s delicious; B) It’s one of the most popular Turkish street foods; and C) it’s made with doner kebab which is a highly influential dish.

The word durum means “roll” and is used to describe wraps filled with doner kebab ingredients. Made with lavash or yufka flatbreads, it’s popular as a street food snack or restaurant dish and can be found pretty much anywhere in Turkey.

We had this terrific lamb durum at Durumzade in Istanbul, the durum shop featured on the Istanbul episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. It’s incredibly delicious and a must-try when you visit Istanbul.

As described, a durum is often made with doner kebab ingredients. A doner kebab is a type of kebab made with meat cooked on vertical rotisserie. As it turns and gets grilled by a vertical cooking element, the outermost layer is shaved off and used as fillings for the durum.

I didn’t know this at the time of our trip but it was fascinating to learn that the doner kebab may very well have influenced similar dishes like Greek gyros, Arabic shawarmas, and Mexican tacos al pastor.

The dish made its way to the Middle East where it took root and became known as shawarmas. It was later brought to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants where it evolved into tacos al pastor. Around the 1920s, exchanges between Turkey and Greece led to the birth of gyros.

The next time you bite into a tacos al pastor or gyros, just remember that none of those dishes would probably exist today if it weren’t for the doner kebab. Food can be so fascinating.