Who serves the most delicious gumbo in New Orleans? The top burrito in San Francisco? Welcome to Taste of the Town, where we call on a local expert to share the best versions of one of their city’s most iconic foods.
It’s common to hear hungry Parisians ask, “On se fait un kebab?” How about a kebab? The iconic street food is served at hundreds of shops across the city and is prized for its reliable late-night availability. Paris’s kebab offerings encompass a swath of styles that reflect the city’s history of migration. Today Parisian life is fueled by endless combinations of fire-grilled meat, crisp vegetables, and bright sauce folded into pliable bread.
The word kebap, or kebab, per its Turkish and Arabic origins, describes the dish and the means of preparing it—historically by grilling lamb or mutton with vegetables. The first kebabs reached Paris after World War II in the form of gyros brought by Anatolian Greeks who settled in the Latin Quarter south of the Seine. It wasn’t until the late 1960s and ’70s, with the arrival of Turkish communities via eastern France, that the döner, composed of chargrilled slivers of meat cooked on a rotating spit, made its mark. First a fixture of working-class neighborhoods, the widespread popularity of kebabs began to soar in the 2000s, fueled by references in French rap music.
Kebabs are something of an unofficial national dish in Paris, ranking third among the country’s convenience food favorites—right behind pizza and burgers, according to the food trend firm Strateg’eat. As Paris kebab culture continues to evolve, you’ll find adaptations adorned with French cheeses, stuffed with crisp fries, and paired with natural wine. The essential kebab styles found in Paris all begin with a base of carved meat, but that’s where the similarities end, as you’ll see from these eight local favorites that demonstrate just how much range this sandwich has.
Know Your Kebabs
Paris is home to a great number of kebabs. These are the five essentials.
Le döner: Lamb, chicken, or a combination cut from a vertical spit and
stuffed into a pita with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and white sauce. Often comes stuffed with fries.
Le dürüm: A Kurdish rolled sandwich made with lavash and filled with grilled meat and vegetables.
Berliner: Popularized by Turkish immigrants in the 1970s, the Parisian version consists of a pita filled with crudités and grilled vegetables, carved meat, and feta.
Shawarma: The Middle Eastern staple features spit-roasted lamb or chicken wrapped in a flatbread with vegetables and, often, tahini or hummus.
Le grec: A Greek gyro filled with grilled pork and chicken, crudités, and tzatziki bundled in a hefty pocketless pita.
Broche
After launching Adar, a Middle Eastern deli, in 2019, chef Tamir Nahmias followed with a compact canteen inside the Passage des Panoramas, Paris’s oldest covered passageway. You’ll find just two items at this lunch-only restaurant. There’s crisp falafel for meat-refrainers, but most come for the shawarma made with a mix of chicken, turkey, and lamb marinated for 48 hours in a spiced lemon-yogurt sauce. The meat is then baked in a wood-fired oven on a horizontal spit similar to the ones used before the invention of the vertical spit in the mid 19th century. The hunks are layered in a pillowy pita alongside carrots and cabbage, fresh mint, and a drizzle of tahini and amba, a salt-cured mango hot sauce. Both sandwiches come in half portions for light eaters.
Urfa Dürüm
58 rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis
The rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement wouldn’t be the bustling food destination it is without this Kurdish kebab institution, named for the style that originates from Urfa in the Kurdish part of Turkey. Since Pierre Oguz opened the shop in 2007, Parisians have come from all over the city for his dürüm kebab—a rolled variant using unleavened lavash and filled with tender, juicy meat and an array of bright, chopped vegetables. Locals queue to watch Oguz’s team hand-roll and bake the supple lavash and grill chunks of beef, chicken, and lamb over blisteringly hot charcoal. It’s worth spending a few euros more for a side of lahmacun, a round, veil-thin piece of crispy dough topped with minced meat and herbs.
Mehmet
Mehmet owners Julien Catelain (left) and Matthieu Haddak take a break.
When locals crave kebab but want more than a grab-and-go sandwich or counter snack, they DM the owners of Mehmet on Instagram for a reservation at this döner shop and natural wine bar in the 18th arrondissement. Julien Catelain and Matthieu Haddak mix laid-back Parisian design—distressed walls and tiled counters—with a Turkish menu that includes mezze as well as spit-roasted chicken kebabs rolled with pickled cabbage, red onions, and spicy yogurt sauce. You can easily order the entirety of the tight menu, but no matter what, don’t skip the spicy chicken wings, lamb and veal keftas on a platter alongside strips of pita, and hummus topped with ground lamb, all rounded with a helping of crisp fries.
Özlem
This Turkish restaurant has become the standard-bearer for döner lovers. Owner Edip Bolatoglu carries on the commitment to quality that his father established when he opened shop in 1987. Bolatoglu kneads and bakes flatbread on-site each morning to feed longtime regulars who give him la bise (a double-cheek kiss) whenever they visit. To make each rolled sandwich, he starts by rubbing the plate-size bread on the spit to coat it with sizzling fat. He then spreads on a layer of spicy harissa and sizzles it face down on the grill before stuffing the roll with lettuce, parsley-coated onions, and peak season tomatoes. Next come strips of marinated and spiced veal breast mixed with turkey that he cuts from the spit with a knife instead of an electric slicer. Though this labor-intensive method is seldom used these days, Bolatoglu insists his measured approach renders the most perfectly cooked slivers of meat. Each sandwich is finished with a spoonful of bright and spicy tomato sauce.
Sürpriz
Saddling up to this kebab joint feels like being transported to Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, home to the hot spot K’ups Gemüsekebap where Sürpriz owners Benedikt Schilling and Stéphane Brass both worked. From the blond wood biergarten tables on the sidewalk to the white-tiled countertops and neon lights, Sürpriz is an homage to Berlin and the godfather of kebab, Kadir Nurman. The shop’s chicken is sourced from the same German butcher as Mustafa’s, a döner kebab institution in Berlin. The crowd, however, is plenty local, and they flock until late for the classic marinated chicken kebab in a buttered pita, overflowing with eggplant, zucchini, and grilled carrots along with lettuce, crudités, and crumbled feta.
Gemüse
This pocket-size spot in the 18th arrondissement opened in 2018 with less than a dozen seats and three kebab offerings. Germanophile Noé Lazare specializes in seasonally rotating takes on Berliner kebabs nestled into breads including fluffy pide. The classic features marinated chicken, the vegetarian doubles up on fresh vegetables and cheese, and a monthly special is inspired by global flavors like Japanese curry or Swiss raclette. Lazare’s classic veers slightly from other Berliner döners, his spit-roasted chicken joined by a heftier-than-ordinary portion of grilled vegetables, including red cabbage, onions sprinkled with sumac, carrots, red bell peppers, eggplant, and zucchini. Loads of feta, parsley, mint, and lemon juice complete the bright, herbaceous dish.
Filakia
When locals want “un grec”—a nod to the gyros brought to the city by Greek immigrants after WWII—they come to this casual café in the 2nd arrondissement. Since 2014, chef Chloé Monchalin has served gyros and souvlaki on skewers. Both the free-range pork and chicken versions are marinated in a bright and herb-heavy secret sauce before being spit-roasted and served in a homemade Greek pita (thicker than Arabic pita and pocketless) and stuffed with the classic trinity of lettuce, tomato, and red onions. (Those in the know make sure to add an order of crunchy oregano-dusted fries.) It’s all tied together with a helping of tzatziki. This is one of the few places kebab lovers will find a fish iteration comprised of breaded cod, tzatziki, crisp cucumbers, red onions, and a squeeze of lime.
B. Bell
Samir and Stéphane Bellahcene’s shop anchors the brothers’ sandwich operation in France’s centuries-old tradition of spit-roasting meat. They spit-grill a mix of smoked turkey and milk-fed veal that’s crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, layer it with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, any number of French cheeses, and stuff it all into house-made bread with an elastic crumb somewhere between baguette and pita. Of the eight combinations, the aptly named Parisienne best shows off the French-first focus—alongside the meat and vegetables are grilled button mushrooms and shredded Comté cheese. A honey mustard sauce completes the picture. Most regulars go big and add a side of double-fried fries, which you’ll have a chance to ogle from the picnic tables out front as you wait for your own.
