The Germans increasingly prefer the Doner kebab for the hot dog. Saying it’s a poll by Yougov that 45% of adults in Germany prefer doner kebab to 37% currywurst: 15% instead say they dislike both dishes. The transition from currywurst to kebab is mostly generational, shows the same survey. Sausage doused with Indian spices and dipped in spicy ketchup – which first appeared in Berlin after World War II – is more popular with older Germans, especially men, than kebab, a dish popularized by Turkish immigrants in the ’70s, which tends to be the case is more popular among young people and women. In fact, while 47% of women prefer doner kebabs, only 30% opt for currywurst, while the two dishes are almost equal for men. Italian cuisine is also always at the top of the general preference among young people: The Germans of “Generation Z” prefer Italian cuisine (21%) to their own (15%).
Farewell to the currywurst, the taste is becoming more “cosmopolitan”
The new Yougov survey commissioned by the German Press Agency shows how young people in Germany have changed their minds and love currywurst or bratwurst less and less. The “palate” of the Germans, especially among young people, is becoming increasingly international and cosmopolitan. Pizza, pasta, doner kebabs and burgers are therefore much more popular with the younger generation than traditional German dishes. While German restaurants are still the top choice among the over-55s (at 32%, far ahead of Italian cuisine at 21%), as mentioned above, the latter has a clear advantage among young people. But that wasn’t always the case. For a long time, as the Deutsch Turkisches Journal points out, the Germany it was the land of German home cooking and dishes, as she once said with the gastronomy critic Wolfram Siebeck. And the majority of Germans have been resolutely opposed to international cuisine for many decades.
This is how the German palate is changing
Foreign restaurants have been viewed with a great deal of skepticism in Germany for many decades. After World War II, the first Balkan restaurants opened in West Germany, opened by refugees from Tito’s communist Yugoslavia. The first Italian immigrants settled down West Germany exported pizza, pasta and traditional Italian dishes to the countryside in the 1950s, from the 1960s it was mainly Turks and Greeks who imported the doner kebab, which was popular in Germany and around the world.