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Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

Take away kebab shops are the very bottom of the market for the most part.

If you want quality Turkish kebabs which are nicely cooked, generally identifiable and not swimming in grease you go to a Turkish barbecue grill restaurant.

I don't know how long you've been away but they're everywhere here now with not an elephant leg in sight. They'll even serve you a nice salad with bulgur wheat.

It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for or that you can't buy terrible food in other countries such as Australia too.

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About five years, I don’t believe for a second the market has changed that much across the country in that time.

Yes, you can get good Turkish food in a lot of places, and good Turkish food is delicious.

But the post I was responding to called out kebab shops in particular as excellent and I wouldn’t want people thinking they can get ‘good’ food in the average high-street kebab place.

Don’t get me wrong, it hits the spot after a skinful… but high-quality it is not. See my sibling post about the various meat-scandals.

> It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for.

Just as well I said nothing of the sort then eh?

> Just as well I said nothing of the sort then eh?

I think you did.

I think you've presented criminal behaviour as if it's not an aberration.

You've ignored that there are good kebab shops and bad. That good high street kebab shops are common and sell more than just low quality donnas, including shish with fresh salad.

I never want to eat a donna kebab, so I don't order it.

> I think you did.

Cool.

I'll be waiting here for you to quote and link exactly where I did this -

"It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for"

And “that you can't buy terrible food in other countries such as Australia too.”

Or you could apologise. Up to you really.

And until then I’ll be ignoring anything else you have to say, because I think what’s actually disingenuous is to make things up and accuse people of them.

> But the post I was responding to called out kebab shops in particular as excellent and I wouldn’t want people thinking they can get ‘good’ food in the average high-street kebab place.

You can in fact get excellent food at high-street kebab shops. That's my point. When I go to the UK it's literally what I survive on because the alternative (gellied eels anyone?) is completely inedible. You can also get haloumi from most of the good ones, which you can't in most places in the US.

I also don't know why people are calling it an "elephant leg", that's crazy. It's shwarma and it's delicious. I think racism and general UK/AU diet has contorted the perception here. People with more varied diets probably appreciate it a lot more.

It’s not shwarma at most of them mate, it’s highly processed doner, and the reason most of us would only touch them after 15 pints is we know what’s in it, or rather we know that we don’t know what’s in it. They’re extremely high fat and high salt, and there’s a multi-decade history of the manufacturers being busted for shenanigans.

Jellied eels? I don’t think most British people have ever eaten those except maybe on a dare.

I’m going to be charitable and assume you’ve only ever been to a small part of the East End of London, where you can get jellied eels (not the case in much of the country) and where there is likely a diverse enough community that actual decent shwarma exists.

Because if you’re eating doner kebabs regularly, from whatever vendor you come across in most of the UK, all I can say is you might want to check your heart health.

I mean most foods in the UK are bad for your health. Ham egg and chips (which I actually like) is hardly salt free. There's literally chips on or in everything. I've been all over the UK but tend to stay in East London precisely because it has the food I like.

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