France is currently engaged in a national debate focusing on grilled meat garnished with salad and wrapped up in a flatbread. Kebabs returned to the political spotlight last month, when the city of Marseille announced a crackdown on snack bars in its city center—allowing officials to preempt commercial leases in an area where almost all these establishments are kebab shops. This comes on the heels of a more explicit anti-kebab ban in the city of Béziers in 2015. Meanwhile, several major Italian cities, including Florence and Venice, are trying to banish the hugely popular street food from the city core, too.
The food fight isn’t explicitly about employment, taxation, or foreign policy, but all three do come into play—as does the bigger question of national identity. The kebab, France’s third-most-popular takeaway food, has thus become a focal point for the debate about multiculturalism and how cities imagine themselves. [...]
“There’s a clear connection between economic stress and the birth of this debate over kebab shops,” says Raffard. “Usually, no one explicitly says, ‘we are banning kebab shops because we don’t want foreigners,’ but that this feeling lies underneath is nonetheless quite clear. The same cities that try to clear out kebabs never make the same policies about sushi or pizza or Chinese restaurants, for example, even though these are not specifically local. The target of the discourse are people coming from traditionally Muslim countries.” [...]
A key criticism from opponents is that kebabs are poor quality, trashy food that somehow undercuts and damages local food traditions. This is hogwash. For a start, France’s and Europe’s kebabs vary hugely, from the cheapest most basic wraps that come in at around €4 to gourmet fare sold for twice that. Since most regions and countries have their own local variations, the product is also far from uniform. Certainly the meat isn’t always great at the cheap end, but then neither usually is the ham that goes into a classically French croque Monsieur (a toasted sandwich with ham and cheese, or sometimes a cheesy bechamel sauce). The kebab isn’t a monument to low quality—it’s a happy example of the market providing decent food cheaply.
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