Name: Has Döner Eryaman Şubesi
Address: Altay, Ayaş Ankara Yolu Blv. NO:172 B/BA, Etimesgut, Ankara, 06670, TR
Telephone: 0505 868 06 68
Price range: €€
Rating: 3.9

Türkiye

Turkey

Ankara

Etimesgut

Has Döner Eryaman Şubesi

Greece's vertical-spit kebab stacks slices of marinated pork, or chicken, on an upright skewer, roasts them as it turns, shaves them off in thin strips and folds them into a grilled pita with tzatziki, tomato, onion and a handful of fried potatoes: that is gyros. The word means a turn or circle, from the same root as gyroscope, and the dish arrived in Greece with the döner tradition brought by refugees from Asia Minor in the 1920s; the pita wrap in its present form took shape in Athens after the Second World War. Outside Greece, especially in the United States, gyros usually means a pressed loaf of minced lamb and beef, a Chicago factory product from the 1970s, which is a different thing. In Greece pork is the default, chicken the common alternative, and lamb a rarity.

A proper spit is built from thin slices of pork shoulder or neck, marinated overnight in olive oil, lemon, oregano, garlic, salt and often a little paprika or sweet wine, then threaded tightly onto the skewer with layers of fat so the cylinder bastes itself. It roasts slowly in front of a gas or charcoal element, and the cook shaves only the browned outer layer, so each cut yields crisp edges and juicy inner meat. The strips land on a hot plate and are often finished for a moment on the flat-top with a squeeze of lemon. The pita is a thick, soft Greek flatbread, oiled and warmed on the grill, not a pocket bread. Assembly is fast: tzatziki spread first, then meat, tomato, raw onion, chips and sometimes mustard or a dusting of paprika, rolled in paper.

Judge the meat as you would any spit roast: look for strips with a browned, slightly crisp edge and a tender centre, seasoned clearly with oregano and lemon. Grey, steamed shreds or uniform brown slices from a frozen cone belong to a different and lesser dish. The tzatziki should be thick strained yoghurt with real garlic and drained cucumber, not a thin dressing. The pita should be warm, soft and grilled, with enough structure to hold the filling. The chips inside are not a gimmick, they are standard in most of Greece; mark them down only if they are limp. A gyros plate, served open with the same elements and extra pita, is judged on the same points. Mark down meat that tastes mainly of salt, cold pita, watery sauce, and the pressed-loaf version if it is sold as the Greek original.

Gyros

Konya's answer to lahmacun is etli ekmek, meat bread: a strip of thin dough a metre or more long, spread with a mince of lamb, onion and tomato and baked in a stone oven until the edges blister, then cut into hand-width pieces and served with a lemon and a plate of raw onion. It is the everyday lunch of central Anatolia, sold in fırın bakeries where the ovens run from early morning, and it is tied to Konya the way pide is tied to the Black Sea. The differences from lahmacun matter: etli ekmek is oval and very long rather than round, the dough is a little thicker and softer, the meat layer is thinner and spread edge to edge, and the seasoning is milder, with no chilli heat. Variants add cheese (kaşarlı), egg, or a layer of thin pastırma; a version with only cheese and herbs is sold as peynirli.

The dough is flour, water, salt, a little yeast and sometimes a spoon of oil, worked until elastic and rested, then stretched by hand and rolling pin into a long oval of two or three millimetres. The topping is lamb or a lamb-and-beef mix, chopped fine with onion that has been grated and squeezed, fresh tomato, parsley, salt and black pepper; in Konya the meat is fatty and the onion generous, and the mixture is spread so thinly that the dough is visible through it. The bread goes into a taş fırın on a long wooden peel and bakes for three or four minutes at high heat, close to the fire, so the base crisps and the rim rises and chars in places. It is brought to the table on a long board, scissored into pieces, and eaten with lemon squeezed over, a bite of onion and often a glass of ayran.

Judge the dough and the bake first: the base should be crisp underneath, the rim blistered and light, and the middle soft enough to fold a piece in half without snapping. The meat should be juicy and still slightly pink at the centre of the layer, seasoned so lamb and onion lead; dry grey crumbs or a thick, meatloaf-like slab are both wrong. The whole length should be evenly covered, with no bare patches at the ends. Mark down a pale, bready base from a cool oven, a greasy underside, raw onion flavour from unsqueezed onion, and tomato paste standing in for fresh tomato. A hot etli ekmek should still be slightly pliable five minutes after it arrives; one that has gone hard was baked too long or sat too long.

Etli ekmek

Meat stacked on a vertical spit, roasted in front of a grill as it turns and shaved off in thin slices as the outer layer browns: that is döner kebab, and the word döner means turning. The upright spit is generally credited to Bursa in the 1860s or 1870s, and the Turkish original is made from whole slices of lamb or beef layered with tail fat, not from mince. From there the dish split into families: the Bursa plate with butter and tomato sauce known as İskender, the Istanbul ekmek arası döner in half a loaf with onion and tomato, the Greek gyros with pork and tzatziki, the Levantine shawarma with its garlic toum, and the German döner built in Berlin in the 1970s, a flatbread pocket stuffed with salad and sauces that has since become the most eaten version in Europe. On BiteCritic you rate the one in front of you, so it helps to know which family it belongs to.

A proper spit starts the day before. Slices of leg and shoulder are beaten thin, marinated in onion juice, yoghurt or milk, salt and black pepper, then threaded onto the skewer in alternating layers of lean and fat and pressed into a tapered cylinder. In front of the heat, the surface should brown within the first centimetre while the core stays underdone, and the usta cuts only what has coloured, in long ribbons that fall onto a tray. The spit is turned away from the heat between cuts so the next layer does not scorch. Beef, chicken and mixed spits follow the same logic; the difference is in the marinade and the fat. Industrial döner is minced meat, breadcrumbs and binders pressed into a frozen cone, and it slices as crumbly, uniform brown shreds rather than ribbons.

Judge the meat before the bread or the sauce. Ribbons with a crisp browned edge and a soft, juicy inside score highly; grey strips held warm in a tray since noon do not. The fat should be present enough to carry flavour and not so present that the bread turns translucent. In a sandwich, the bread matters second: pide or half a loaf should be lightly toasted on the grill and able to hold the filling without tearing. Salad belongs in moderation and sauces should not be the loudest thing on the plate; in Türkiye garlic yoghurt sauces are a German import. Mark down pressed-cone meat, meat cut thick and chewy, soggy bread, and lettuce-heavy wraps where the kebab is a garnish. A spit that has been fully carved and restarted midday is a sign of a busy shop, and a good one.

Döner kebab

A long skewer of minced lamb or beef, grilled over charcoal, rolled tightly inside a sheet of lavash, cut into slices and served with a tomato-butter sauce and a pool of garlic yoghurt: the beyti is the kebab that Istanbul made rather than inherited. It takes its name from Beyti Güler, whose restaurant in the Florya district has operated since 1945; his original beyti of the 1960s was a cut of lamb wrapped in its own fat, and the wrapped-and-sliced version served everywhere today is a later development that borrowed his name. Within the kebab family it sits closest to Adana and Urfa, since the meat is the same hand-chopped mince on a flat skewer; what makes it a beyti is the lavash, the slicing, and the sauce. It is a dish of knife and fork, not of the hand, and in a kebapçı it is one of the more expensive orders.

The meat is prepared as for an Adana or Urfa skewer: fatty lamb or a lamb-beef mix chopped fine with onion, salt, pepper and red pepper, kneaded, rested cold and pressed along a wide skewer. It is grilled over charcoal until browned and just cooked, then laid on a thin lavash that has been warmed on the grill, often with a line of melted butter or a scatter of parsley, and rolled as tight as a cigar. The roll is cut on the diagonal into pieces three to four centimetres long and arranged on the plate, sometimes brushed with butter and returned to the grill or oven for a minute so the lavash crisps at the edges. The sauce is tomato, fresh or paste, cooked briefly in butter with a pinch of salt and sometimes pul biber, poured over or beside the slices; thick süzme yoghurt with crushed garlic goes alongside, and grilled peppers and tomato complete the plate.

Score the meat as you would an Adana: coarse, juicy, seasoned so lamb leads, with some char and no dryness. Then look at the roll. The lavash should be thin and clinging, soft where it meets the meat and lightly crisp at the cut edges, not thick, doughy or soggy. The slices should hold together when lifted. The sauce should taste of tomato and butter, hot and not sweet, and it should not drown the plate; the yoghurt should be cold, thick and garlicky enough to register. Mark down a beyti built from pre-cooked or pressed meat, a lavash that has turned to paste under the sauce, cold slices that were rolled long before service, ketchup-like sauce, and a version without yoghurt. A plate where the sauce and yoghurt have been mixed into one pink puddle before it arrives has been assembled by someone who did not care.

Beyti kebab

Buranın dönerini severek yiyorum. Biraz soğuk geldi galiba saat 12’de öğle arası yoğunluğundan erkenden kesiliyor. Patatesler de lezzetli baya. Et çok yağlı değil, rahatsız etmiyor

Yemek porsiyonu küçük, lezzetli, ikramlar iyi, hizmet hızlı. Personel güler yüzlü

Döner çok tuzlu ve yağlıydı. Etin koku biraz ağırdı. 120 gr olan döneri bitiremedim bile. 

Bence gayet lezzetli bir döner. Çok yağlı değil. Tuzu azaltılırsa daha güzel olabilir. Yanında gelen patates salata her şey lezzetli. Aspavalardan daha lezzetli bir tercih olduğunu düşünüyorum.

The bread was a bit thicker than I expected. It is very important to have crunchy taste and this one was lacking.

Meat was fine and fat was a bit too much. 

Still a decent a food to try but there are better versions I tasted.

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