My Shawarma

Fast casual Mediterranean restaurants are a growing niche, both in the Chicago area and around the country. (Or around the world–there is in fact a small chain in Dubai that shares a name with the title of this post) When I wrote about falafel sandwiches a few years ago, I profiled several–Naf Naf Grill, I Dream of Falafel, and Benjyehuda. The process in each of these is similar, and familiar to anyone who’s been to a Chipotle (or a Subway for that matter): choose a base (pita, rice bowl, salad), choose a protein (falafel et al), choose other toppings and sauces. Pay and skedaddle back to your office to eat at your desk.

Benjyehuda, being a block from my office, is in my regular rotation these days, and its protein options in addition to falafel (and the “fireball” spicy falafel they serve on Fridays) are lamb gyro meat, and chicken or steak shawarma. Shawarma, like gyros and tacos al pastor or al arabe, is a type of marinaded meat, stacked on a vertical spit and roasted, and like those other meats is also descended from the Turkish doner kebab. My typical order at Benjyehuda involves falafel or gyros, but I ventured in for a chicken shawarma pita recently.

This is a busy sandwich, and normally not this neat (PRO TIP: ask for the sauces on the side before schlepping it back to your desk) but satisfying in that downtown slick corporate all-restaurants-are-taco-bell kind of way.

Another downtown fast-casual place I’ve tried recently is the new (to me) nesh! Mediterranean Grill. Nesh serves their shawarma wrapped (somewhat lazily) in a type of flatbread they call shrock.

I ordered my chicken shawarma with Jerusalem salad, pickles and onions, tahini and hot sauce. This is what it looked like on the inside:

I wasn’t sure at the time what “shrock” was, but I was a little disappointed in the wrap. It tasted OK but (and this is hard for me to admit), I actually prefer the “burrito” style of shawarma sandwich–let’s call it a “wrap” I guess–to the pita variety, either stuffed or wrapped. (See Benjyehuda above for the pita wrap. Keep reading for the stuffed type)

In the southwest suburbs of Chicago, not far from where I live, there are a number of small Middle-eastern restaurants, bakeries, sweet shops, and bodegas–in towns like Orland Park, Oak Lawn, Palos Heights, Worth, and especially in Bridgeview, IL–selling Mediterranean treats of all kinds including pitas and other flatbreads, falafel, and of course shawarma.

A frequent stop for us in Orland is Shish Kabob House, tucked away just off 159th Street and 94th Avenue, bordering a large shopping district. I often wonder what would possess someone to eat at the Cheesecake Factory or Panda Express when they could stop in a nice, family-owned place like this around the corner.

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On our most recent trip, Mindy and I ordered between us an order of Muthawuma (a garlic sauce like Toum, but thickened, perhaps with a potato puree similar to Greek Skordalia), Fattoush salad (a favorite of mine, and Shish Kabob House’s rendition is a good one), lamb and vegetable kabob skewers, and their beef shawarma.

Normally I prefer chicken shawarma–the beef renditions tend to have a heavier clove or allspice flavor in the marinade that I like less than the seasonings used in the chicken marinade–but on this day the beef looked good and I thought I’d give it a try. And it was good, though sharing that clove flavor I sometimes find offputting in this style, fresh and simple, with tahini sauce, pickles and onions. I was happy with it. The pillowy texture of the pita easily contains the meat, and though by the end the sauces have soaked into the last bit of bread, that too is its own reward.

Contrast that though with this, from Baba Saj in Oak Lawn.

This is the chicken shawarma wrap from Baba Saj, served in their Saj bread. Saj refers to both the convex griddle used took cook the flatbread and to the bread itself. The slices of shawarma are added to the flatbread, along with some pickles and sauce, and then it is wrapped up tightly, put back on the griddle, and weighted, to brown the outside of the bread, crisping it up and providing a better experience in terms of flavor, texture, and temperature.

I’m not certain whether Baba Saj has an actual shawarma machine in house, or how fresh the chicken is when it’s added to the wrap, but they do a fine job regardless.

Enter Salem

“It’s bullshit,” Salem tells me, speaking of the shawarma sold at places like Benjyehuda. “They pull it out of steam tables, soggy and lukewarm, and they cover it with piles of crap.” Salem is a friend of mine from work, who came to the US with his wife and child 4 years ago as an asylum seeker escaping from Syria’s civil war. He’s a warm and engaging person, and a brilliant, well-spoken network engineer, but he has Opinions about shawarma, and this is what I’m here for.

I asked Salem to tell me his favorite shawarma place so I could try it. “Well you’d need an armed guard in Damascus,” he said. I amended my request to his favorite local shawarma place. “I’ll meet you there.” So it was that we ended up at Kabob Q in Willowbrook, IL.

On first glance, Kabob Q resembles other fast casual Mediterranean restaurants in surface ways, from the clean suburban strip mall environs to the array of condiments available. Salem says though that if you know what you’re doing, you can order something that resembles, at least a little, the shawarma he experienced growing up in Damascus. “In Damascus,” he said, “a place like this would be busy all the time. While you’re waiting in line, the man might cut some shawarma off the spit and put it right into your mouth. If you were hungry, and didn’t have anything, you could come to a place like this and you’d get something to eat.”

Kabob Q’s proprietor, Feras Nassif, is a countryman and friend of Salem’s. I spoke with him a little, before our meal and again after. Feras has a culinary background, having studied at École hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland before coming to the US. He was friendly but focused–the in-house traffic on this Saturday afternoon was not brisk but he was packaging up and delivering multiple catering orders. He left us in Salem’s hands, and those of his staff. “This man is my brother,” he said of Salem. “He’ll take care of you.” Salem took over the ordering, at least when it came to shawarma, and explained himself to me as he went.

First, Salem said, you want them to cut the meat from the spit directly onto your flatbread if possible. Kabob Q offers both pita and a Saj-like flatbread, of which I chose the latter. I was trying both chicken and steak shawarma this day, and per our request, they cut the meat fresh from the spit. Mindy’s shish kabob plate and Ian’s chicken kabob plate were both served fresh from the grill as well.

Second, Salem said, is this: simplicity. There is a certain small combination of ingredients that are appropriate for each type of shawarma, chicken and beef. (And lamb? Salem says that most Mediterranean places in America don’t do lamb shawarma because the lamb here, due to breed, environment, diet, or other factors, just doesn’t taste right in shawarma. Kabob Q, like most other places, only offers chicken and beef shawarma.)

For the chicken shawarma, Salem recommended only pickles, garlic sauce (toum), and a pomegranate molasses he called dubs rumman. The chicken is arranged in the center of the flatbread, with pickles along one side. The garlic sauce is added in a thick bead on top, while a thin, barely-there line of the pomegranate molasses weaves over the top.

Then the flatbread is wrapped tightly around the fillings, much like a burrito, and the whole is placed on a griddle with a weight on top (or in a flat sandwich press, a Lebanese innovation, Salem says) to brown and crisp the bread.

A similar process is followed for the beef shawarma, though the ingredients differ. For the beef shawarma, Salem allows pickles, onions, tahini sauce, pomegranate molasses, and chopped parsley.

How’s this for a recommendation: this was the first time that I ever really enjoyed beef shawarma. The clove flavor was present, but not overwhelming, and for some reason I think the pomegranate syrup made it more acceptable to my palate. I fully recognize this is my own limitation but I associate clove with pies and with sweet glazed ham.

However, it didn’t hurt that the beef was cut fresh from the spit and the wrap was so perfectly griddled, and dressed in a properly minimalist fashion. And therein may be the third factor: simplicity means speed. The faster the shawarma gets from the fire to your mouth, the better it will be.

Does Kabob Q have hummus, baba ghanoush, various salads, or tomatoes even? Yes. But according to Salem, “tomatoes on shawarma are an abomination.” He doesn’t approve of adding hummus either. Still, if you want all those things in your shawarma wrap, or if you want it in a pita, you can get if that way at Kabob Q. I tasted their hummus, I tasted their baba ghanoush, everything was delicious and made in-house according to Feras and his staff.

DIY Time

Of course I can’t properly do justice at home to shawarma, not a real shawarma. I don’t have a shawarma machine, the vertical roasting spit, to do it properly. There are some electric-heated countertop models available for <$100, but they seem flimsy. There are some propane-heated models available for around $400, which seem sturdier, and not totally out of reach. I am not sure I can yet fully justify getting one for the rare occasion when I’d want to make doner kebab or gyros, shawarma, or al pastor at home.

But I can get close, using the grill and some skewers. We stopped on our way home from Kabob Q at my favorite little strip mall in Bridgeview, IL, and picked up some flatbreads from Alwatan Bakery.

“Are these saj?” I asked. “They’re called ‘shrak,'” he replied. According to the Wikipedia article, saj and shrak (or “shrock” as nesh! spells it) are all names for a type of flatbread that is also called Markook, and saj is the word for the convex griddle used to bake it.

While there, we also picked up some mediterranean pickles and a bottle of pomegranate molasses from the Al-Amal grocery next door. I hope the man from the grocery isn’t upset that I reveal to you all that he told me the pomegranate molasses is his secret barbecue ingredient. “I put it in all my meat marinades,” he said. “People always ask me, what is that flavor?”

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To make a marinade, I toasted 1tb coriander seeds, 1tb cumin seeds, a few dried chilis, and 4 cardamom pods in a dry skillet, then ground them in a mill and combined them with 1tsp turmeric, 1tsp white pepper, 1tsp paprika, the juice of 2 lemons, 6 minced cloves of garlic, a little extra virgin olive oil, and some sea salt. 2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs, cut into cubes, went into this marinade overnight before being threaded onto metal skewers and grilled.

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To make my shawarma wrap, I started with a shrak flatbread. These things are gigantic.

I chopped up some chicken, fresh off the grill, to simulate the texture of shawarma being cut off the spit. If I stuck the chicken cubes in there whole, this would be a chicken kabob wrap instead!

Rather than lay the pickle spears alongside the chicken like they did at Kabob Q, I decided to put them on top of the chicken. No real reason other than aesthetic.

And now for the sauces. In addition to the pomegranate molasses, I made some homemade toum. I could not find a recipe for toum that made less than a quart of the stuff, and the flavor is much more prominently garlicky and lemony than what I had at Kabob Q, more like the intensely-flavored Muthawuma from Shish Kabob House. What I’m saying is, if you’ve ever looked at mayonnaise and thought to yourself, I wish when I ate that mayonnaise it was like sticking my tongue on a 9-volt battery made of garlic and lemon, making your own homemade toum may be an option for you.

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Then I wrapped the shrak tightly around the shawarma, like a burrito, and heated both sides on a griddle, placing another pan on top as a weight.

Was it good? Yes. It was excellent, and one of the best things I’ve eaten recently. Was it as good as the one I had at Kabob Q? No, the two things can’t really compare.

When a shawarma is seasoned properly, cooked properly, cut fresh and hot from the spit, with that mix of crisp and juicy the vertical rotisserie provides, when it is quickly and expertly added to a wrap and eaten still hot, there is nothing that can really compare.

I will be back to Kabob Q. I sincerely hope that others find it as well. If you enjoy shawarma, it’s worth a trip. It’s certainly easier to get to than Damascus.