Gyros, shawarmas, and al pastor tacos. Besides being delicious, what do they all have in common? They are all different variations of the same food: the Turkish d\u00f6ner kebab. The dish consists of seasoned meat in the form of beef\/lamb mix or chicken, roasted on a vertical rotating spit device. D\u00f6ner can be eaten as a sandwich or alongside rice. My parents both ate d\u00f6ners often as children when growing up in Turkey during the 80s and 90s, whether it was a cheap version from a shop off the streets, or a better quality and more expensive version in Turkish restaurants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Dad, pictured above in the year 1998 next to a d\u00f6ner device in a Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn, described d\u00f6ner as a \u201ccomfort food.\u201d When they immigrated here in the late 1990s, d\u00f6ner became a bridge to Turkish culture for them despite being abroad. For me, growing up in NYC meant eating many different versions of d\u00f6ner: whether it was from an authentic Turkish restaurant in Astoria, a gyro from a Greek food cart, a Berlin-style d\u00f6ner with fresh vegetables and tasty sauces, or as a home-made Iskender kebab (a different Turkish dish with d\u00f6ner meat). All of these foods, while delicious to eat, provide a special connection to me through d\u00f6ner being a cross-cultural food, allowing me to connect my childhood and the d\u00f6ner I eat\/ate here to what my parents ate in Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gyros, shawarmas, and al pastor tacos. Besides being delicious, what do they all have in common? They are all different variations of the same food: the Turkish d\u00f6ner kebab. The dish consists of seasoned meat in the form of beef\/lamb mix or chicken, roasted on a vertical rotating spit device. D\u00f6ner can be eaten as a sandwich or alongside rice. My parents both ate d\u00f6ners often as children when growing up in Turkey during the 80s and 90s, whether it was a cheap version from a shop off the streets, or a better quality and more expensive version in Turkish restaurants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":914,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,38,20,15,24,26,34,4],"tags":[155,191,190,50,189,5,79,188,187],"ppma_author":[192],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foodways","category-identity","category-kara-schlichtling","category-queens-college","category-seminar-2","category-spring-2026","category-tenement-museum","category-your-story","tag-nyc","tag-childhood","tag-doner","tag-food","tag-foodways","tag-identity","tag-immigration","tag-turkey","tag-turkish","clear"],"authors":[{"term_id":192,"user_id":914,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duludag","display_name":"duludag","avatar_url":"\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dcd6139cb4a35d29090ce8b3618771bc?s=96&r=g&d=https%3A%2F%2Fopenlab.macaulay.cuny.edu%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2Fcropped-mhc_openlab_icon_1.png","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/914"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/your-story-our-story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}