Location: 246 Queen Street West, Toronto
Website: https://www.germandonerkebab.com/
German Doner Kebab is a German chain with locations around the world that specializes in — surprise, surprise — doner kebab.
They have a few things on the menu, though it all revolves around the doner kebab, which is meat that’s cooked on a vertical rotating spit, shawarma-style. They serve chicken, beef, or a mix of both.
I ordered the Original German Doner Kebab, which features a whole bunch of meat (chicken and beef, in my case), veggies and sauce on what they call toasted sesame waffle bread.
It’s tasty enough, though the way the sandwich was constructed meant that there was a ton of meat on the bottom, veggies in the middle, and sauce on top. I tried my best to alternate bites between the three sections so I’d get a variety of flavours, but it was basically impossible to get a mouthful with all three components.
The sandwich comes as it comes, so I wasn’t told anything about the sauces or any of the toppings, but according to the website they have three sauces: signature spicy sauce, signature garlic sauce, and signature yogurt sauce. I wish it were spicier, but otherwise the sauces were quite tasty: they were sweet, garlicky, and a little bit tangy. They would have done a great job of balancing out the saltiness of the meat, but unfortunately there was a voluminous layer of veggies between the meat and the sauce, so I didn’t get any mouthfuls with both.
Because yeah, the meat was very salty. The level of seasoning was so intense that it entirely overwhelmed the flavour of the meat; I tried a bunch on its own (as you can see from the picture, a decent amount had tumbled out of the sandwich before they even brought it to me), and none of it particularly tasted like chicken or beef — it just tasted like generic, salty meat. I literally couldn’t tell any of it apart. They might have accidentally given me one or the other instead of a mix, but the fact that I couldn’t figure out what any of it was supposed to be is… odd.
Still, it was tasty enough; there were no off or gamy flavours here, so it certainly wasn’t unpleasant to eat. That’s not to mention the bread, which was nicely toasted, with a satisfying exterior crunch and fluffy interior that (mostly) held together despite how messy the sandwich was.
It’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend this place when Otto’s Berlin Doner is serving a very similar sandwich that’s much, much better. But if you’re in the area and you’re looking for a hearty, quick meal, you could definitely do worse.
Michael Eats 