A shawarma is very similar to a gyro, both are wrapped in a pita like bread (although I don't think the shawarma bread is called pita). A shawarma tends to have spicier ingredients compared to a gyro, and originates from the Middle East.
Technically, any method of serving meat from a vertical rotisserie is a shawarma. The bread is typically pita bread, but you can use laffa or tombik bread instead if you want
TIL that the Mexican "Al Pastor" is technically a shawarma. I was previously aware that it is based on Mediterranean cuisine and adapted by migrants to the ingredients available in Mexico. Neat fact.
Doner and shawarma are the same thing, it's just that doner is the turkish name, shawarma is the arabic name. There's also gyros, which is the Greek name for the same thing.
Edit: should also mention that basically every region in eastern Europe, the caucuses and the middle east has their own regional sauces, types of meat, and use different veggies. Gyros, shawarma and doner are fundamentally the same thing, but there is a lot of variety in which meat, bread, sauces and veggies are offered.
The fundamental concept of a mixture of different meats and spices cooked on a rotating skewer in an oven, served by scraping off the surface, served with veggies and a yogurt based sauce on pita bread, are all consistent across every country's version of the dish. The individual details vary based on local taates and available ingredients.
Actually happened to me walking past a kebab stand with a Korean friend. Apparently ke is a word for food/rice and bab is dog. Kebab roughly translates to "dog food".
lmao just to be clear, korean corn dog stands ("hot dogu") are NOT made of dog meat! but there is a soup with dog meat, like you said. the dog soup is only sold in some specialized restaurants and mostly only grouchy old farts eat there
haha now I'm wondering how aussies say kebab because the American way doesnt quite sound like 개밥. we say more like 크바브. probably just cute joke for your friend to help you feel closer to their culture though :)
I expect it's much the same. He saw the word "Kebab" on a sign as we walked past. That's what sparked the conversation. He read it something close to "care-barb" when he asked.