Moshiko

Moshiko
5 Ben Yehuda
City Center, Jerusalem
Shawarma pita
25 Shekel

 

There's more to the left. You'll have to trust me I guess.

Moshiko was the first shawarma place I ate at when I got here. I had been in Israel a day, and I was dying for some shawarma already. Moshiko is one of the more well known falafel places among Americans weary from loading up on knock-off tee shirts and overpriced Judaica on Ben Yehuda street. It's a clean looking place. I wasn't too hungry, so I got a pita. Though they had a great selection of salads to choose from, I figured I'd stay conservative with my first shawarma, so I just got Israeli salad, pickles, and fries with chummus and skhug. The meat itself was lamb, I think (I wasn't really sure. I called later to ask, but the phone number I found online belonged to a nice fellow who used to, but no longer, works there. Although, I guess I could have just asked him if the shawarma there is lamb, but it's too late now.).


The meat was unlike most shawarma I'm used to, in that it was soft and juicy and not crispy. Meat generally is cooked so that it's crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside. With shawarma the pieces are are too small to have both. So you have to choose one. I choose crispy, since the rest of the sandwich is juicy enough on its own between the salads and sauces. If you don't have the crispy meat, it sometimes gets lost among the other stuff. And if you can't taste the meat, then what's the point?

Even though the meat wasn't crispy, I can't really complain though since it was still delicious, and it held its own just fine. Maybe because I went light on the sauces. Maybe because it was lamb. I don't know. Either way it was good. I did have a bit of an issue though with the pita. As I've already brought up, pitas are tricky. If you don't pack them properly you end up with a trifle instead of a shawarma, with each salad and sauce in its own layer. Shawarma's like a high school prom; if everyone's not mixing its a failure. I wouldn't exactly say this shawarma was a failure, but, Moshiko, if you're there, maybe work on that.

Falafel Doron and the Marvelous Origami That Is the Lafa

Note: The first few shawarmas aren't posted in the order in which they were eaten, for anyone keeping score at home.

Falafel Doron
2 Rachel Imenu
Emek Rephaim, Jerusalem 
Shawarma lafa
35 shekel



I'm familiar with Falafel Doron from when I lived in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem and would walk in daily to Emek Rephaim street for the free internet at Cafe Aroma. On the trendy, restaurant-laden street, It's one of the few true holes-in-the-wall, which is to Shawarma as the concert hall is to classical music. It's where shawarma was meant to be experienced (I guess it has to do with the acoustics or something).

I got my shawarma in a lafa, which I had yet to have since I got here. I was pretty excited as lafa is my favorite vehicle for shawarma, falafel, and just about every other edible thing. If you haven't had a lafa before, imagine a burrito, but thicker, and fluffier. Like an edible down blanket. Now imagine it fresh from the oven. Now imagine further that it's folded just like a burrito except with the top left open so it holds about a ton and a half of food. And if you turn your attention to the bottom of your hypothetical fluffy burrito, you'll note that all the folding going on down there has created a bready wad at the bottom inch or two, which acts as a grease trap that catches all the juice, oil, fat, and hummus that escaped capture initially. Like a delicious, drenched, pillowy POW camp. See fig. 1.

The final advantage of lafa over other breads is that because the lafa is packed while its open and then wrapped up, it takes less skill to execute properly. All sauces, salads, and meats can be easily distributed evenly throughout the lafa from top to bottom. A feat that is more difficult to master in a pita (although pita, when done right, has its own advantages, as we shall see later on).

Back at Falafel Doron, I had ordered my shawarma lafa, and was deciding on the salads to go in it. There wasn't too much deciding to do since there were so few choices. Just israeli salad, pickles, fries, a few cabbage things and maybe one or two other salads. For sauces just hummus, turkish salad, green skhug and amba (which I'm not ready to try just yet). There were a few other things in a separate self serve salad bar, but once the lafa is put together it's not worth trying to stuff more salads into it.

The meat was turkey. I got mine with hummus, israeli salad (it was an odd one. The tomato was cut small and the cucumber shredded in to half inch long bits), skhug, and fries. Unfortunately, my son was due for a nap, so I had to take the shawarma home and eat it in the less then ideal surroundings of my non-hole-in-the-wall apartment.

I know it's in here somewhere.

On opening the wrapping, the presentation was a little disappointing. The lafa was maybe two thirds full. For 35 shekel  I expect my shawarma to be packed to the brim. It took a bit to work my way down to the actual shawarma. That was a disappointment too. I'm not usually one to complain about having too much meat, since I love it so much. But I'll be damned if there wasn't just too much meat. Every shawarma needs to have a balance between meat and salad. Too much meat and you just have a turkey sandwich. Not enough meat and you just shelled out $9.50 for a veggie wrap. As you can see from the picture, my shawarma erred on the turkey sandwich side. Now, as a God-fearing Jew, I don't mind a nice turkey sandwich every once in a while. But this was not a nice turkey sandwich. I couldn't get three bites into it before I needed a glass of water to wash down the first two. It was just so dry. Between all the ingredients, the only thing adding any moisture to the party was the salad. And as noted earlier, There was not nearly enough of it; which is baffling since there was so much room for more. Also, I suspect that the small size of the pieces salad contributed to the dryness, since it seems like it wouldn't hold as much moisture.


The turkey itself was passable, well spiced (although the spice somehow made it seem less shawarma-ish and more turkey-sandwich-ish), and not too dry, but when turkey is the appetizer, main course, and dessert it damn well better be more than passable.

Either way, I just couldn't get past how dry the thing was. I guess it's better for the Kinneret, wasting less water on sandwiches and everything. But goddammit, I want my shawarmas soaked head to toe. Isn't that why they built all those desalination plants?

I Have Returned

In the summer of 2007 I came with my dear wife to Israel. We arrived with just the clothes on our backs (and in our suitcases, of course), and a dream. The same dream that my father dreamed while canning lox in a basement in Queens, and his father dreamed while being pelted in the head with rocks by angry Poles, and his father before him dreamed, probably also while getting pelted with rocks. The dream of two thousand years worth of rock-pelted fathers. The dream to eat every shawarma in Israel (I'm pretty sure they touched on it in Hatikva).

This is shawarma. It is better than sliced bread. It contains the entire food pyramid* and every other food shape worth a damn. It can cure everything from scurvy to pickled beet deficiency. But most importantly it is the most delicious food on earth. It's a living, breathing sandwich that wants nothing more than to be eaten and enjoyed by me and you, and asks for nothing in return other than maybe a drop on your shirt to remember it by. Shawarma shops are the most ubiquitous food purveyors in Israel. And do you know why?  Because Israelis are smart. They want their food to be quick, clean, cheap, and satisfying. Now, I'm not saying that if you start eating shawarma daily you will become the world leader in venture capitalism. But, as they say: correlation equals causation.

*if you replace dairy products with Tahini products, as well you should.

To make a long story short, I failed my dream. I imagined I'd travel around the country like Pac-Man; chomping up shawarma after shawarma, stopping only to snack on the occasional pretzel or blinking ghost. But it wasn't to be. I left the Holy Land beaten and bewildered. I was exiled to Washington, DC. Where the people's need for ethnic pocketed meals is fulfilled by burritos and calzones, and the benevolent shawarma is cast aside and ignored. But I have finally returned. And I'm ready to once again eat tons of shawarma. And I will record it here, as a guide for all of you. In order to do that, I must get inside the shawarma. I must become one with the it. I must become...

...The Shawarma Chameleon.