How Taylor Swift fell in love with Turkish kebabs

Pressed between a selection of shops, cafes and shuttered buildings in London’s Kentish Town neighbourhood, sits a Turkish kebab takeaway that could easily be missed.

But Kentish Delights has been the go-to place for a quick and tasty kebab meal by none other than America’s pop darling Taylor Swift.

Swift, the first and only artist to win four Album of the Year Grammy awards, is reported to have placed an order at the discrete no-frills eatery ahead of her recent UK record-breaking Eras Tour, which kicked off on June 21.

Enough chicken kebabs to feed 15 people were ordered a day before her London tour’s first show at an estimated cost of around £100 ($127).

The shop’s owner, Ahmed Khan, told local media that Swift has been visiting Kentish Delight for years.

"Many times she comes in here and orders from us, then she liked the food and then they decided to make a music video here — End Game," Khan said. Kentish Delights appears towards the end of 2017’s End Game music video, where she can be seen passing takeaway boxes from the shop to a group of friends who then tuck into the kebabs.

Her former partner British actor Joe Alwyn is from the area, with Khan telling the BBC last month, that the pop music sensation used to drop by frequently when visiting her former flame before the pandemic.

Alwyn is said to be the inspiration behind her latest and eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, released on April 19. Swift and Alwyn were romantically involved for six years before ending their relationship in March last year.

Khan told another local media outlet that Swift’s go-to order is a chicken döner kebab with lots of salad, garlic mayo, and chilli sauce.

Since putting Kentish Delights on the map, the kebab spot has reportedly been overwhelmed with Swifties, as devoted fans of the pop star are fondly known, all eager to chow down on some Turkish döner kebab.

“I came for the Taylor Swift hype, and I stayed for the best döner I've ever had. Absolutely delicious. Ahmed is the kindest gentleman, and makes fantastic food!,” according to one review left under the modest shop’s Google page.

Another local spot to experience the ‘Swift Effect’, the power of the superstar’s economic influence, is a London pub, which was referenced in her song, The Black Dog. After the song was released as a bonus track on her latest album, fans flooded the pub with the same name in Vauxhall, south London.

"We're just loving it, it's been so fun. All of the attention has been pretty overwhelming but we can't be happier,” Lily Bottomley, events and social manager at The Black Dog, reportedly said about the reaction from Swifties.

Turkish national heritage

While the Miss America star’s love for Turkish döner kebab may have been a hard guess for some, it shouldn’t really be all that surprising.

The popularity of kebabs from Türkiye is worldwide, with a variety of mouthwatering Turkish options to boot.

In April, Türkiye submitted an application to the EU to grant the Turkish döner kebab special protection status. This measure serves as a way of preserving the characteristics and traditional way of making a food item. By registering the name ‘döner’, only restaurateurs that prepare the food item using the traditional production methods, will be allowed to serve it. Other European classics, like the Neapolitan pizza and Spanish jamon serrano, already have protected status.

Döner kebabs are a classic Turkish meat dish made from thinly sliced beef, lamb, or chicken, and roasted on a rotating spit for several hours, cooking the meat as it turns. And it’s from this style of cooking that the dish actually takes its name. Döner comes from the word dönmek, which translates as ‘turning’ in English.

According to the document submitted by Türkiye to the EU, the döner economy is estimated to be worth 3.5 billion euros ($3.7 billion) in Europe. Germany alone enjoys as many as 1.3 billion döners annually. Here kebab sales are worth an estimated seven billion euros a year.

“‘Döner’ has become a cultural symbol of Turkish immigration to Europe, in particular, to Germany, which intensively continued from 1962 to 1979. According to the Association of Turkish Döner Producers in Europe (ATDID), ‘Döner’ was first produced by Turkish worker Kadir Nurman in Berlin in 1972. Since then, the name and production process remained unchanged and has spread widely in Germany and other European countries,” parts of the submission states. But it’s also in Germany that the traditional recipe and preparation method has been modified, leading to Türkiye’s request for EU protection.

If Türkiye’s effort is successful, true Turkish döner kebabs must be made by slicing pieces of meat between three to five millimetres thick after having been marinated for at least ten hours in an exact recipe of salt, pepper, thyme, chopped onion, and yoghourt or milk, as reported by local media.