betiko wrote:Looool i get it: a donair is the canadian spelling for a donner kebab?
Not quite. A donair is similar to a donner kebab, but it is not the same thing.
I think that after such breath taking revelation you need to tell your audience a bit more!
Beef, very finely ground, spiced, and pressed into a slab, then cooked on a spit, thinly-sliced, and rolled up in a grilled pita with a sweet garlicy sauce and diced tomatoes and onions.
The one on the right.
Donairs were invented in Bedford, Nova Scotia, by Lebanese immigrant brothers back in the 1950's (ish), when the locals weren't as keen on the lamb & tzaziki-based food the brothers were selling initially.
The sauce is composed of garlic powder, vinegar, sugar and condensed milk and is delicious. If the pita bread is steamed, these are probably the most delicious food on the planet.
2dimes wrote:But you could probably make it with homo milk I bet.
Maybe but you would have to boil it down I believe. A friend of mine opened a pizza shop and through trial and error mimicked the sauce. He used Carnation condensed milk in a can.
2dimes wrote:I have only ever had them here. Every so often there's an article in the paper about how they are way better in the maritimes. How different are they from Gyros?
Donairs and Gyros are virtually identical. Gyros is the Greek word and Doner is the Turkish word. Since the Greeks and the Turks hate each other with a passion, they are forever claiming that their version is the authentic one and the other guy's version is fake, but when pressed they are incapable of identifying any difference.
If you live in a town like I do where 90% of the restaurant owners are Greek, it will be called a Gyros. If you live in a town like Scarborough where 90% of the restaurant owners are Turks and sundry other Muslims, it will be called a Donair.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
Maybe we lack Turks. The donair shops were mostly run by maritimers. Lebanese guys do donair but only as an option for people that don't want shwarma.
There's tons of Greeks here but they usually either have pizza and steak or souvlaki on pita in their restaurants. I don't know if they still operate but there were even souvlaki carts here for a while. Opa!
betiko wrote:So your donair is basically a lebaneese kebab you can have anywhere, only that the guy invented his own sauce and marketed it with a different name..
betiko wrote:So your donair is basically a lebaneese kebab you can have anywhere, only that the guy invented his own sauce and marketed it with a different name..
Different sauce, and different meat.
The lebaneese is either beef or chicken. It s a shwarma.
The turkish and the greek are lamb. They are not identical due to the bread that is slightly different. Turks use generally a long bread which is thicker and greeks a round bread that is very slim. They also both use wraps for these same sandwiches. The only thing your guys could claim to have invented is a special sauce but i m not even sure it s not already something common in lebanon.
Here in france we have maybe slightly more turks than greeks, and we just lazily call these sandwiches a turkish or a greek. And we often ask for a greek at the turkish and vice versa... Then realize we made a diplomatic mistake lol.
Anyway, for me the best meat is lamb. I soooo freaking love lamb!!! Damn i m hungry now..
betiko wrote:So your donair is basically a lebaneese kebab you can have anywhere, only that the guy invented his own sauce and marketed it with a different name..
Different sauce, and different meat.
The lebaneese is either beef or chicken. It s a shwarma.
The turkish and the greek are lamb. They are not identical due to the bread that is slightly different. Turks use generally a long bread which is thicker and greeks a round bread that is very slim. They also both use wraps for these same sandwiches. The only thing your guys could claim to have invented is a special sauce but i m not even sure it s not already something common in lebanon.
Here in france we have maybe slightly more turks than greeks, and we just lazily call these sandwiches a turkish or a greek. And we often ask for a greek at the turkish and vice versa... Then realize we made a diplomatic mistake lol.
Anyway, for me the best meat is lamb. I soooo freaking love lamb!!! Damn i m hungry now..
Betiko,
What the Lebanese guys did was change the meat to a spicy beef that is different than the traditional spicy beef (lol) and invent a different sauce.
I have had the traditional style and prefer the "donair" type.
betiko wrote:So your donair is basically a lebaneese kebab you can have anywhere, only that the guy invented his own sauce and marketed it with a different name..
Different sauce, and different meat.
The lebaneese is either beef or chicken. It s a shwarma.
The turkish and the greek are lamb. They are not identical due to the bread that is slightly different. Turks use generally a long bread which is thicker and greeks a round bread that is very slim. They also both use wraps for these same sandwiches. The only thing your guys could claim to have invented is a special sauce but i m not even sure it s not already something common in lebanon.
Here in france we have maybe slightly more turks than greeks, and we just lazily call these sandwiches a turkish or a greek. And we often ask for a greek at the turkish and vice versa... Then realize we made a diplomatic mistake lol.
Anyway, for me the best meat is lamb. I soooo freaking love lamb!!! Damn i m hungry now..
Shwarma is something different again. In fact many donair shops here in Calgary also sell shwarma (and can't make a proper donair for the life of them, but that's another story). Perhaps when I wrote, "the one on the right", you looked at the one on the left. That's shwarma.
Suffice it to say, donairs are not something you have had before, but they are similar in appearance to things that you may have had.
Actually checked on google and a shawarma, a doner kebab and a gyros are the same thing, they are just lebanese, turkish or greek. There is no specific meat for any of them as long as they are grilled on this turning thing, and are called just depending on the origins of the guy holding the restaurant. Only that 90% of kebabs and gyros are lamb, the other 10 are chicken. Shawarmas tend to be beef or chicken, at least over here, and served with hummus and keftas.
Anyway, from your picture the one on the left looked like chicken and the one on the right looked like beef to me.
If i go to quebec or anywhere in canada, it will not be for your food! There would be tons of much more interesting stuff to do, and there are tons of countries that are much more interesting for my stomach Poutine seriously? All the people I know that went to canada/quebec had to embarassingly tell their proud canadian hosts that it was good food...