A shawarma is a popular fast food throughout the Middle East. In a shawarma, meat such as lamb, chicken, turkey or beef (or a combination thereof) is slowly turned on a skewer and shaved off with a knife to order as part of a sandwich or platter. It’s a similar concept to the Turkish doner kebab or the Greek gyro. The spices differ from one culinary tradition to another, but most begin with a meat marinade that includes cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, lemon juice and yogurt.

As part of my impromptu Jewish Christmas adventure in Midwood, I visited Olympic Pita, a dine-in and take-out Glatt Kosher Israeli-style restaurant. Their specialties center around the thick upright rotating meat tower made of chicken and turkey. I had the shawarma (also known as the Arabian taco) on a laffa ($9.99) which includes a huge portion of thinly-sliced, juicy, glistening meat on laffa bread, a fluffy flatbread that has more substance and diameter than the pita option. The shawarma is filled with your choice of hummus and any of dozens of fresh vegetable salads. I ordered my shawarma with hummus, sour pickles, spicy red onions and a chopped cucumber salad. On the side I had a celery and carrot salad, some pickled beets and two different cabbage sides. I dipped the shawarma in amba, which Calvin Trillin revealed as an Iraqi-Jewish pickled mango sauce.

Olympic Pita also serves a variety of shish kebabs, falafel, schnitzel, soups and more. The hungry teenage boys in front of me ordered their shawarma platters with french fries tucked inside the bread. All in all, a top-notch Christmas lunch.

Olympic Pita
1419 Coney Island Avenue

and

58 W. 38th Street
Manhattan

Photo courtesy of ess a bisel .