HOW to feel your age. ToM editor Neil Sowerby has always prided himself that he lived in Berlin before David Bowie. OK, he didn’t get to hang out with Iggy Pop and take industrial quantities of cocaine but he shared his own boho late boyhood in the shadow of the Wall with the likes of the Baader Meinhof Gang and Günter Grass (not that he actually hung out with these contemporaries).
Still it’s a sobering thought to realise you pre-date the döner kebab. I slummed it early Seventies in the Turkish quarter Wedding but left a year before immigrant Kadir Nurman invented the doner in the divided Cold War city. Juicy compressed meat, sliced from a rotating skewer, with all the trimmings and optional chilli sauce – the rest is history, an enduring slice of Berlin fast food that has conquered the globe etcetera, especially post-pub.
All of which brings us to Döner Haus, a big hit in Glasgow with its Berlin-themed kebab menu, now rolled out into the former Byron Burger site in Manchester’s Corn Exchange, home to so many themed food aspirations.
I wanted to like the new Haus on the block and deliberately ordered the mixed chilli combo (£9) of shawarma chicken and veal/turkey composite to ensure some flavour oomph. Or should that be oom pah pah?
The filling that arrived, in a lightly stale sesame flatbread, had the texture of pencil shavings and barely tasted of anything. Such a disappointment. Just like the absence of half the beers listed on draught. I wanted to try unfiltered, cloudy Köstritzer Kellerbier but had to settle for Hofbrau, a shadow of our own Manchester Union Lager. Just the pint for me; the bar was doing a roaring trade in foaming litre steins. No sign of a Berliner Weisse, though, the (acquired) taste of Berlin.
Currywurst was an old companion from my Berlin years and Döner Haus’s was no different from any I have reminisced over on returns to the city. The curry ketchup, as always, is more fruity ketchup than curry in the mini-wurst version served here – six inches of bratwurst with some sprightly sauerkraut (£5.50).
We do wonder about provenance. Chicken is advertised as gluten-free, but so fresh chicken should be; is it free range? And is it a sustainable selling point that the veal and turkey base is apparently imported from Germany? Neither meat is a guilt-free choice on the continent.
After this Ersatz Berlin it was a relief to repair to a homegrown contemporary kebab joint, whose meat sourcing we trust – BAB NQ in Little Lever Street, tucked away off Stevenson Square. The 55-cover all day haunt is a side project from Pen & Pencil’s Kevin Connor and Dan Pollard. Early doors I had mixed feelings about its selling point of ‘gourmet kebabs’ from the open kitchen chargrill but now I’m a convert.
A pint of Beavertown Gamma Ray in hand and decidedly no beer hall vibe as I odered the current special based on flat iron steak, cooked rare. Not a döner in sight. Instead interesting takes on filled bread pouches – harissa octopus, pig cheek shawarma with pickled fennel and the stand-out lamb adana with feta and pistachio labneh.
All lost out to tender slices of steak against a delicate flatbread backdrop trewn with whipped blue cheese and truffle, pickled raisins, walnuts, balsamic pickled onions, beetroot pure and watercress (for £12).
Döner Haus, The Corn Exchange, Exchange Street, Manchester M4 3TR. 0161 834 8312; BAB NQ, 14 Little Lever St, Manchester M1 1HR. 0161 806 0813.