Kebap with Attitude: Döner, Out of the Ordinary
Kebap with Attitude is a full service döner kebab restaurant at Gipsstraße 2 in Berlin Mitte, open since 2019 and known as Berlin's first new wave döner restaurant. The beef spit is stacked by hand from whole slices of local, free range meat. The kebaps, mezze, sauces and several of the drinks are made in our own kitchen, and all of it is served at the table, to as many as 120 guests across a dining room, a front terrace and a backyard garden. Falstaff ranked us first among ten Berlin kebap restaurants, with 93 points.
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Kebap with Attitude at a Glance
What: a full service döner kebab restaurant with mezze, salads, desserts and a bar
Where: Gipsstraße 2, 10119 Berlin Mitte, near Rosenthaler Platz
Since: 2019
Seats: up to 120, inside, on the front terrace and in the backyard garden
The spit: whole slices of beef, stacked by hand every day, with no minced meat
The meat: local and free range, from Schleswig Holstein, Mecklenburg Vorpommern and Brandenburg
Made in house: kebaps, mezze, salad, 10+ sauces, Ayran, iced tea and lemonade
For every diet: falafel, halloumi or Planted in any kebap, the fully vegan Vallah Vegan, and options for gluten free and lactose free eating
Also: delivery through Wolt, Lieferando and Uber Eats, an online catering shop and event catering across Berlin
Why Döner Deserved Better
Berlin eats döner the way other cities drink coffee. On the way home, between two meetings, at three in the morning with one hand free. It's the dish this city gave the world, and for most of its life it has been sold on two promises: cheap and quick. Where the meat came from, who made the sauce, what exactly was turning on that spit, these were questions you learned not to ask.
We opened on Gipsstraße in 2019 because we thought the questions were worth asking. Pizza had been taken seriously. Burgers had been taken seriously. Ramen had whole queues devoted to it. Döner, the most loved of the lot, was still waiting. So we gave it what the others already had: good ingredients with a known origin, a kitchen that makes things from scratch and a table to eat it at. We called the idea Döner 2.0, with a grin, and it stuck.
The attitude in our name has little to do with swagger. It stands for the four things we decided on before the first spit went up: transparency, fairness, local sourcing and contemporary cooking. We've never wanted to turn the kebap into fine dining, and we've no patience for fast food that tastes of nothing. Somewhere between the two there's a döner made with care and eaten without hurry. That's the one we make.
A Döner Restaurant, Not a Counter
Nobody takes your order across a pane of glass here. You're shown to a table, a menu arrives, and the first decision of the evening is which mezze to share. We're a restaurant in the full sense of the word, with service at the table, a kitchen you can smell from the door and a bar at the back.
There's room for up to 120 guests, spread over three spaces with very different moods. The dining room is the loud, warm heart of the place, kilim patterns on the walls and a blue tiled mosaic table at the far end that large groups tend to claim for the night. The front terrace looks out onto Gipsstraße, a quiet street two minutes from the bustle of Rosenthaler Platz. And through the back there's a garden in the courtyard that first time guests rarely expect. On a July evening it's as good a place as any in Mitte to eat with your hands.
A table changes the food. At a counter, döner is one item, wrapped and gone in ten minutes. Sitting down, it becomes dinner: Hummus and Mama Ganoush in the middle, pide torn and passed around, a Truffle Delüks next to a Tschick so everyone can argue about which is better, and a burnt San Sebastián cheesecake that somebody claims they're too full for.
The Team: Many Languages, One Standard
Spend an hour in our dining room and you'll hear more languages than you can place. The people who cook and serve here come from many countries, and the menu is better for it. A kitchen built on Turkish and Berlin döner traditions picks things up along the way: tahini sweetened for the Mini Falafel, mint and lime over grilled vegetables, a cheesecake from the Basque coast sharing the dessert menu with baklava.
Whatever the accent, the first word you'll hear is the same. Selam. It's Turkish for hello, it's printed on our menu and it glows in lights by the entrance.
What everyone here shares is the standard. Each member of the team knows how the spit is built, what goes into every sauce and which dishes are vegan, so the person bringing your food can also tell you about it. In a full service restaurant, that knowledge is half the service.
What's on the Spit? Ask Us Anything
The question we hear most often comes from guests who've been watching the spit turn for a minute or two: what's actually on that? It's a fair question, and in Germany it has a surprising answer. Food guidelines allow a döner kebab to be made with up to 60 percent minced meat. Plenty are.
Ours has none. Our beef spit is yaprak döner, which means it's built from whole slices of meat laid one on top of the other, the way döner was made long before factories started pressing cones. The beef comes from free range farms in Schleswig Holstein, Mecklenburg Vorpommern and Brandenburg. We'll tell you that at the table, and we print the short version on every menu under the words Natural Attitude: our meat is exclusively local and free range, all our kebaps are homemade, and our sauces are made in house from natural ingredients.
Being transparent also means saying what we don't make. Our pide is baked in Neukölln, by a bakery that has more ovens and more patience for dough than we do, and it arrives fresh every morning. If you have an allergy or you just like to know, ask. You'll get the full list of what's in a dish, from someone who knows.
Homemade Kebaps, Mezze, Sauces and Drinks
In most döner shops, the cooking happened somewhere else. The spit was assembled in a factory and delivered frozen, the sauce came in a bucket, the falafel in a bag. The shop slices, fills and sells.
Our kitchen starts further back. Every day the beef is sliced, marinated and stacked onto the spit by hand, a job that takes a practised cook a good while and that the Tagesspiegel once sent a reporter to watch. All 11 of our sauces are made here, from the garlic, herb and spicy trio every Berliner knows to Smoky BBQ, truffle mayo and a Vegan Cacık made with soy. The mezze are ours too: Hummus, Mama Ganoush from aubergines roasted whole in our oven, Turşu pickled in house, Mini Falafel, Zucchini Feta Fritters, Cauli Tahini and a Turkish lentil soup made for cold days.
It carries on at the bar. The Ayran is made here, salty and cold, and so are the iced tea and the lemonade, which come by the glass or in a carafe for the table. Making everything yourself costs time and hands. It's also why a kebap here tastes like somebody cooked it.
The Suppliers We Know and Trust
A kitchen that cooks from scratch depends on a small circle of people it can rely on. We've kept ours close to home.
The meat comes from free range farms in northern and eastern Germany. The pide travels a few kilometres, from Neukölln to Mitte, every morning. For our plant based kebaps we work with Planted, because their product holds up to a hot grill and a sharp sauce, which is the only test that matters in a döner.
The fridge behind the bar tells the same story. The beer and the cider are brewed by BRŁO in Berlin. The table water is Berliner Rohrperle, and the bottled water is Viva con Agua, which supports clean water projects. Club Mate, Fritz and Thomas Henry cover the soft drinks, and the house shot is Mampe, a Berlin original. Eat and drink here and a good part of what's on your table comes from the region.
Contemporary Kebaps, From the Klassik to the Truffle Delüks
We're sometimes asked whether we've reinvented the döner. Order our Klassik and you get the Berlin original: beef, lettuce, red cabbage, red onions, tomatoes, pickles and parsley in pide, with garlic, herb or spicy sauce, or all three.
What we have done is treat the döner as a dish that can hold more than one idea, which is why we like to call the restaurant an Institute for Contemporary Kebaps. The O.G. is our contemporary version of İskender kebab, the famous dish from Bursa, developed in our own kitchen: beef with grilled pointed peppers, tomatoes, yoghurt, parsley, butter, pickles and tomato sauce. The Tschick sets chicken against grilled vegetables, feta, mint and lime. The Truffle Delüks, the one the food press keeps coming back for, layers beef with green asparagus, roasted potatoes, pomegranate, truffle mayo and truffle grated fresh over the top. Smoky BBQ and Chilli Cheese come as a soft sandwich or a tray and lean happily towards comfort food. Now and then a seasonal special joins the menu for a few weeks.
Most kebaps come as a pide, as a Dürüm rolled in thin yufka or as a Tray, the large plate with a side. And every new idea has to pass the same test: it only goes on the menu if the base underneath is right. Truffle can't rescue a poor döner. On a hand stacked spit, in fresh bread, with a homemade sauce, it has something to stand on.
A Bar That Pours Berlin
Evenings here tend to run longer than planned, and the drinks list carries some of the blame. There's BRŁO Helles on tap, Efes in the bottle for anyone feeling nostalgic, house wine in red, white and rosé, and a short cocktail list: Aperol Spritz, Limoncello Spritz, Gin Tonic, a Horse's Neck with bourbon and ginger ale.
The one to order is the Yeni Rakı Margarita. Rakı is the anise spirit that has stood next to mezze on Turkish tables for generations, and here it's turned into a cocktail that surprises most people who try it. Purists can have their Yeni Rakı as a shot.
If you're not drinking, you're well looked after. Homemade Ayran is the classic partner to a döner, and the homemade iced tea and lemonade are made for long afternoons in the garden. There's Gazoz, the Turkish soda, and to finish, Turkish çay, hot mint with ginger or an espresso.
Something for Everyone: Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten Free and Lactose Free
Every group has one. The friend who's vegan, the colleague who can't have gluten, the cousin who avoids dairy. At most döner shops that person ends up with a box of salad and a polite smile. Here, they order like everybody else.
For vegetarians and vegans, any kebap on the menu can be made with falafel, grilled halloumi or Planted in place of meat. The Vallah Vegan was written as a vegan dish from the first line: Planted, fried cauliflower, pomegranate, pink pickled radish, sesame, chilli and soy cacık. Four of our sauces are vegan, namely Tomato, Spicy, Smoky BBQ and Vegan Cacık. Most of the mezze are vegetarian, and our Mama Ganoush is vegan.
If you don't eat gluten, the Tray is your format. It leaves the bread out and puts the kebap on a plate with a side, and our rice is gluten free. If you're lactose intolerant, the vegan sauces contain no dairy at all, and yoghurt, feta or butter can simply be left off a kebap or swapped for something else.
That flexibility is built into the menu. Kebaps, mezze and sauces can all be changed around, so tell our team about an allergy or an intolerance when you order and they'll go through the menu with you and build the meal to fit. A table with one meat eater, one vegan and one guest who can't have gluten orders from the same menu and shares the same evening.
The Regulars
No review means as much to us as a familiar face at the door. There are guests who have been coming since our first weeks on Gipsstraße, guests who keep a standing Thursday date for Dönerstag, and guests who booked one birthday in the garden and came back for the next. Office teams from around Rosenthaler Platz turn up for lunch, and families take over the big tables at the weekend.
A restaurant with regulars owes something to its street. Our takeaway packaging is recyclable, and a line on our menu asks guests to help keep the neighbourhood clean: if you've carried your kebap to the park, bring the rubbish back and we'll take it off your hands.
Event Catering and Brand Activations
Some of our best nights happen away from Gipsstraße. Brands, agencies and companies across Berlin book Kebap with Attitude for product launches, brand activations, team parties and office lunches, and a good number of them come back again and again.
The setup follows the occasion. It can be a buffet, a spread of mezze and kebaps for sharing or a DIY kebap station where guests build their own, with our team and equipment on site. The restaurant itself can be booked for private events of up to 120 guests, indoors or out. Larger plans start on our event booking page. Office lunches and group orders go through the online catering shop, for delivery or pickup.
What the Press Says
We set out to make döner people would talk about, and they have. Falstaff put Kebap with Attitude at the top of its Berlin kebap ranking, first of ten with 93 points. BBC Travel wrote about a restaurant taking "a more contemporary approach to the dish". Tasting Table decided we're not "a regular döner shop; it's a cool döner shop", and singled out the Truffle Delüks. Stern asked in a headline whether this was the reinvention of the döner.
The Financial Times and the Associated Press have reported from our dining room, the Tagesschau covered our truffle and asparagus kebaps, and the Tagesspiegel wrote about how a spit gets stacked by hand. When we put Beelitz asparagus into a döner for the first time, Berliner Zeitung, tip Berlin, Bild and rbb all came to taste it.
Where to Find Us in Berlin Mitte
Kebap with Attitude is at Gipsstraße 2, 10119 Berlin, a short walk from Rosenthaler Platz. Come with people you like, order more mezze than seems sensible and let the kebaps follow when the table is ready for them.
If tonight is a night for the sofa, we deliver through Wolt, Lieferando and Uber Eats. And if you're planning something bigger, write to us. We'll bring the kebap.
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