Arab kebab shops have helped shape the gentrification in quarters of Berlin such as Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain from the beginning. Starting with this ethnic cuisine, Miriam Stock examines the construction of taste landscapes in those districts. She illuminates both the creative practices and positionings of migrant snack shop operators along with the dispositions of the neo-bourgeois consumers who in their quest for cultural hegemony are anxious for stagings of authenticity. Using more subtle and close observation of the everyday, a diagnosis of the times is developed via the fine mechanics of distinction in late modern capitalism.
