İskender kebap

Bursa serves its döner as a plated dish rather than a sandwich and calls it İskender kebap: thin slices of lamb laid over cubes of pide bread, covered in a tomato sauce, finished at the table with browned sheep's-milk butter poured from a pan, and served with thick yoghurt on the side. The dish takes its name from İskender Efendi, a Bursa butcher credited in the late nineteenth century with turning the horizontal grilling spit upright, which is the origin of döner as it is now known. His descendants still run restaurants in the city and hold a registered trademark on the name, which is why many menus elsewhere call it Bursa kebabı. The four parts are fixed: bread, meat, sauce, butter. Anything else on the plate is a local addition.