Advert or art?

High art on the terrace of my local kebab/pizza joint.

I love this picture so much. Just look how happy they are eating a kebab. Their clearly perfect marriage and lives are based upon the regular, sharing of a doner kebab. For me this goes far beyond the realm of competent advertising photography and into that of high art due to the complete cognitive dissonance resulting from the depicted kebab imagery, and the kebab imagery held within my mind and memory.

Happy, well-dressed, professional couples just do not belong to the sphere of the kebab shop. The kebab shop is for me (and I would hazard a guess at 95% of other Northern Europeans) forever associated with drunken, post-pub/club ambles home with friends through dark city streets. The kebab shop is always a harsh neon and fluorescent pool of light amongst the dinginess of the night, a place with the slight edginess of anywhere that causes different groups of drunk young men to congregate and attempt to queue. I can't believe that anyone really eats a doner without having had at least three pints first, and often considerably more. Revolving-dinosaur-legs are just not associated with the dining experience when good food is a central part of the evening.

I was on stag-party this weekend, more of which later probably, and of course a kebab was part of the evenings entertainment. Let me recommend "Punjab Kebab" (they have kebab in the Punjab?! The staff also looked oddly Turkish, rather than Punjabi, as well...) in Tampere, central Finland, for a fine kebab tasting like, well, pretty much every other kebab I've ever had in dozens of Kebab joints across northern Europe.

The gastronomic arts at their finest.

Check out the website of the company advertised in the original picture as well, my German isn't good enough to understand much but it is full of great photos making kebab meat manufacturing to look like as an efficient and sterile an industrial process as the German stereotypes would lead you to expect. The opening page picture is also a winner for kebab fans everywhere.