Shawarma spins on our sidewalks. Al Pastor pirouettes over our curbs. Freeways corkscrew in concrete cyclones. Los Angeles is nothing if not a trompo town.
Döner, the majestic progenitor of vertically roasted meats, has just entered this thunderdome, raised to an art form at Döner Corner. The Turkish food perfectionist opened two months ago where Wilshire splits the northern reaches of Sawtelle from Brentwood in the space that once housed the still-mourned Belle Vie.
As you draw nearer, the aroma of roasting beef and lamb fat will hit you, overpowering the Big Macs and greasy Happy Meals of a neighboring McDonald’s.
Inside, everything you eat–save for the steak fries–is made from scratch, from the signature yarak döner (leaf döner) to the pita, pide, lavash, hummus, and salty yogurt beverage ayran, which swirls and splashes inside a drink dispenser on the counter.
“We want to create something new and to show, especially to non-Turkish people, what true döner is,” founder Mucib Erzen, an attorney from Istanbul who opened the space with backing from partners, tells L.A. TACO in Turkish, translated by his brother Nurettin, the restaurant’s manager.
“It’s one of the best dishes in the world,” he says. “People tell us they haven’t had real Turkish döner, so it’s not well-known. But from now on, we’re going to do everything we can to make it known.”
Central to the small, charming cafe space is the shapely, two-foot trunk of döner meat, suspended on a vertical spit and evenly circling a succession of four red-hot, gas-powered square grates.
Over the one-and-a-half years of the restaurant's conception, the crew of chefs was recruited from döner restaurants as far away as Virginia, New Jersey, Washington D.C., and New York. They trade commands and updates in Turkish, grilling and baking in a tiny prep area behind glass under furious heat.
“Döner has to be made by people who know what they’re doing,” Mucib says. “It looks really simple, but the handling and the work behind it is very complicated.”
As the outer edge of the döner stack caramelizes, its pink striations transforming into a luscious brown, an aproned chef under a round hat shaves off a plane from the top, using an almost comically extended blade that had to be imported from Turkey.
The slices fall apart into tender strips, destined for your plates of pure döner, butter-and-tomato sauce-shellacked iskender, stuffed pide, pizza-like lahmajun, and hulking sandwiches on crusty bread that comes straight out of the oven.
Cutting it into leaf-thin slices takes an exceptionally experienced chef, Mucib tells us.
Döner Corner marinates their döner for 72 hours using high-quality Halal beef shanks combined with lamb fat (70% beef to 30% lamb fat) for flavor and juiciness.
Together, these meats are sliced very thinly into sheets. The meat is then placed in large bowls and marinated for three days in a proprietary–and closely guarded–recipe blend of yogurt, onion, pepper, and salt. The slices are then skewered and stacked on the spit, trimmed and shaped with a knife, and slowly roasted on rotation. The meat shavings are tender and flavor-packed, with a tangy lamb flavor prominent, though tempered into an ideal balance.
I’ve enjoyed them in pure döner plates, with fresh lavash on the bottom serving as a meat mattress to soak up all the juice for the final (and best) bites. There’s a reward in stacking varying amounts of the meat strips in your mouth, comparing the different heights and levels, from savoring one strip at a time to just cramming a bunch in your mouth like carnivorous Big League Chew.
I loved it in the restaurant’s giant sandwiches, where the highlight was the hot, sesame-speckled roll it came stuffed into.
Like many other non-Turkish diners, I liked it best on a plate of iskender, where a huge pile of meat curls is doused in tomato sauce and finished with a ladle of melted butter, straight from the pan, tomato slices, and a sole chile on top, plus a significant dollop of yogurt on the side.
Beloved in this specialty of Bursa, Turkey–named for its 19th-century originator, Iskender Efendi–a bed of pita cubes famously lays on the bottom, soaking in all the richness above with glorious returns for their consumer.
I have yet to try the tempting pide, lahmajun, kunefe, or baklava for dessert, but like the Terminator, I’ll be back.
The Ezrens tell us they have Turkish fans driving up to two hours for their döner, starting and ending with strong tea, and enjoying appetizers like the creamy hummus or bright green girit ezme, a spinach-based, pesto-ish dip studded with lemon, beyaz peynir (feta cheese), and little nubbins of walnuts and pistachios. Both are served with a basket of quartered, fresh bread.
“Döner is very important to the Turkish people, especially to me,” Mucib says. “It’s one of the three main dishes for me and Turkish people. But I don’t eat it everywhere, there are specific places I will go for it.”
Purely by coincidence, Erzen opened Döner Corner among a small boom of Turkish eats that were newly co-existing within short reach of each other on L.A.’s upper west side.
A few blocks west, Agora Market offers casual munchies like basturma grilled cheese sandwiches and halloumi burritos, along with Turkish groceries. Down the street, Urban Spuds offers a streetside take on Turkish baked potatoes from inside a silver trailer. Just over a mile away stands Lokl Haus, the excellent Turkish coffeehouse that recently put its popular döner pop-up on pause. The curb in front of Lincoln Boulevard's Whole Foods supports Lucky Chick, a Halal stand we recommend for its chicken shawarma.
Though the Ezren brothers and their partners were unaware of this profusion of Turkish businesses when they secured their Westside location, their elevation of local Turkish cuisine comes with a sense of mission to spread their culture.
“Turkish people are not too well-known around the United States,” Nurettin Erzen says. “We want to advertise our culture here. I believe we have a good culture, a warm culture where we can offer people what we do and what we love. I believe that this food is one of the top three in the world, and we want to let the people see what we eat and let the people see how delicious it is.”
The plan is for Döner Corner to open additional locations in L.A. and, perhaps, beyond eventually.
For now, its filling plates can be shared in the Sawtelle neighborhood. Or, more likely, they may be fought over if sharing and not fighting for every last scrap happens to be in your nature.
Of course, everything might change once you get your first taste.
Döner Corner, 11916 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025
