Mac Doner

Inexpensive, great food serving halal meat. They had already taken down the kebab meat after we arrived, but grabbed a beef doner with a side of hummus and tzatziki. Plenty of food for two of us for under 10 €. If you’re in the neighborhood and craving doner or late night food, it’s WAY better than Quick or McDonalds.

Most important thing: it’s cheap! Ordered a beef doner with fries for 5.80 euros. The food is worth about what you pay for it, it’s not a 5 star meal, but it does the trick when you’re starving on the late night. Plus, you get a good amount of food, and fries.

I figured it was time to write a review for my namesake restaurant, the one in the little blurb under my name. It’ll be a problematic review, since I haven’t been here since around November of 2004. But let’s try it and see how it goes.
At the time, «Mac Doner» was an unusually dominating presence, compared to most of the other Turkish-​style takeaway places in the city. For one thing, the 16^th is a rich, heavily white area of Paris, with very little in the way of fast food. This was the only spot for a kebab or an adana kebab sandwich in that part of the neighborhood, and probably one of the few in the neighborhood altogether.
It also had a striking blue neon sign, contrasting against the otherwise staid quality of this semi-​residential street. (Eventually they added a new, more traditional exterior, as I saw when I walked by in 2007 – unfortunately I didn’t stop in and try it again.) And then there’s the name itself, mildly punning, nearly copyright-​infringing. It rolls off the tongue nicely.
As for the food, I would have to admit that I’m adding an extra star for nostalgia. It was, it’s true, one of the earliest kebabs I’d ever eaten, a food which is now a mild obsession. The white sauce was good, tart, fresh, with large bits of mint in it; that bread, the peculiarly French type of round pita, was soft and a little toasted; the fries were decent, just a bit soggy, as they always seem to be when you open the long clamshell package. But the meat never seemed stellar. There were too many fatty bits, too much turkey and not quite enough veal. This definitely wasn’t a «kebab extra veau.»
Still, a kebab in the 16^th, in that forest of dull luxury, is going to have the benefit of uniqueness, of a lack of competition. The surprise of its being there at all adds something to the flavor. I’d go back, I’d even go out of my way to have it again.
I do hope that when they renovated they added some seating, since I remember there being absolutely nothing seven years ago. But either way, there is no arguing with Mac Doner. Either figuratively or literally, since – I’m told – the employees are still on the haughty side.