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Turkey's "Iskender kebab" to open up to European markets
Turkey's "Iskender kebab" will be promoted in Europe, a Turkish businessman said on Monday.
Yavuz Iskenderoglu, a businessman who registered the "Iskender kebab" as "Kebabci Iskender-Yavuz Iskenderoglu" trademark, said it was now the time to open to Europe.
"Therefore, I am planning to set up a doner making facility in Latvia," Iskenderoglu, the chairman of the Executive Board of the "Kebabci Iskender-Yavuz Iskenderoglu" firm, told AA correspondent.
Iskenderoglu said Bulgaria was another option for a doner making facility as he thought his products could freely move among European Union (EU) member states this way.
"Doner to be made at those facilities will be sent to entire Europe," he said.
Iskenderoglu said the only reason he wanted to set up a facility in a European country was that meat and meat products could not go out of Turkey.
"We are planning to establish doner facilities in a way acceptable for EU member states," he said.
Iskenderoglu was among the Turkish businessmen who accompanied Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his two-day visit to Greece on May 14-15. Iskenderoglu said he would open their first restaurant near the parliament building in Athens.
This will be the first time the 150-year brand will open abroad.
Grand Father of Yavuz Iskenderoglu, who's called "Iskender, Son of Mehmet", used to help his uncle cook meat in Istanbul during summer times when he was a kid. During that period, he had the idea of cooking meat vertical to ground, instead of parallel. By this way he tried to stop cooked meat smell, by prevent dropping of meat water onto the fire.
Around 1850's, the family was selling roasted lamb or tandoori at Mehmet Efendi Restaurant, which was a very common job in Bursa. Later in 1860's, he made the proposal to his father to roast the lamb on a large vertical spit, which had been cooked parallel to a fire on the ground for centuries.
To do that, he set a fire in a vertical fireplace, removed the bones and nerves from the meat to be roasted, cooked it on a skewer by constantly spinning before the fire and served it after cutting into thin slices. That different way of serving captured very close attention in Bursa and the food began to be named as "the spinning kebab of Iskender Efendi".
The meat was without any bones, cooked before fire set in a vertical fireplace and cut in a different way. However, the way it used to look was still different from today; it was simpler, no forks and knives were given, thin slices of meat were placed on a pita, which was called "alaturka" (alla turca) then, and it was served with yoghurt, tomato paste and butter to make it a plate of flavor.
AA
