German Döner, English Curry & American Pizza
German Döner Kebab restaurants have started popping up all over London. For some reason, the idea of a German kebab still strikes me as slightly incongruous - a bit like a Swiss curry or a French taco. However, according to a recent analysis of OpenStreetMap food venues, there are far more döner kebab restaurants in Germany than there are in Turkey. In fact, 51% of the world's döner shops are located in Germany. The surprising truth is that restaurant names often tell us more about migration and language than they do about the birthplace of a dish. That's the premise behind Flavor Lines , an ingenious interactive map that uses millions of restaurant names from OpenStreetMap to reveal the invisible cultural boundaries that shape the world's cuisine. Rather than mapping where people eat particular foods, Flavor Lines maps where those foods become part of a restaurant's identity. The application searches OpenStreetMap restaurant names for dishes ranging from döner and sha...
