Food From the Levant

Sorry I am writing this a bit late but I am currently swamped with work, research and few extra-curricular activities not running smoothly these days. Whinge over!

As I mentioned in my last post, Michael Hanson chef and owner of The Hearth Pizzeria and Bake House has kindly invited me to help run a charity event in aid of Syria. Michael wanted to serve food that represents the true flavours of The Levant. We wanted it to be a relaxed chilled evening with delicious authentic dishes, lovely wine and beautiful music. 

The menu

To start, we served six mezze dishes with a beautiful freshly baked flat bread:

Green Keshkeh

Mutabal

Baba Ghanouch

Tabbouleh

Chicken Livers with Pomegranate Molasses

Hummus with Sujuk

Ful Ma'ala (green Fava beans with garlic and coriander)

In addition I was hoping to serve a second hummus dish topped with Ful for vegetarians. However on the day it turned out we had Turkish tinned white beans instead. So, with a bit of improvisation, we ended up cooking the beans then crushing them with salt, cumin, Turkish sun-dried red peppers paste (Muhammara), garlic and lemon juice. It worked a treat!

For main, we served roast leg of lamb with Freekeh and roast vegetables with "Arabic" spin. The latter was cumin, lemon, garlic and chopped parsley. 

For desert, Michael have made beautiful ice creams with true Levantine flavours, pistachios and rose.

The Experience

This was my first experience cooking in a professional setting to 45 paying costumers. I will have to say, I loved every minute of it. Tiring and hot at times but very rewarding. 

The restaurant as I mentioned is pizzeria with a beautiful food fired oven. Although we had a small hob in the preparation area most of the cooking was done in the oven, an unusual method for cooking Freekeh, Ful and chicken livers. It worked well however.

Potato Makmora, my style

Lamb shanks were a revelation the first time I tried them. Believe it or not  that was only 5 years or so ago. 

In Syria we don't cook Lamb shanks the way God intended. Instead we take the meat off the bone cut it into cubes and use it to cook stews. The cut is called Mozat (موزات). I assume it is from the Arabic word Mozeh which means banana. I assume because the the shape of the muscle resembles a tiny banana. (The last three sentences are completely made up. Most likely it has nothing to do with Banana)

I never tasted Mozat until I cooked that lamb shank for the first time.

My mum, bless her, hates meat. She would have been a vegetarian without a doubt if vegetarians were invented at that time. She can't touch raw meat of any form. My dad does all the meat handling and prep at our house. My mum would just push the stuff into the pan with spoon. Once cooked it doesn't get any better. She would only eat red meat if it is in its purest form without any sinew or any trace of fat, preferably without meat flavour or texture! 

I don't know if you have seen a boiled lamb shank. It has a gelatinous connective tissue that holds the muscle together. If my mum ever see this on her plate she wouldn't eat for a week. So needless to say we never ever had lamb shanks in our house.

Enough about that and back to the recipe. This is a simple dish of lamb, potato and onion. I add carrots for extra sweetness. Cooked nice and slow in a clay pot with salt, pepper and allspice. Melting in your mouth tender. It is by far my favourite lamb dish and a stable on my dinner party menu.

Here is my recipe for four:

Four lamb shanks

Two potatoes

One onion

Four carrots

Chicken stock 150 mls

Salt and pepper to taste

Allspice  1tsp

Start by roughly chopping the onion. Peel carrots and potatoes and cut into one inch cubes. Then into the clay pot. Onions at the bottom, lamb shanks, carrots and potato. Pour the chicken stock season generously with freshly ground black pepper and rock salt. Generously sprinkle the allspice over the meat and potatoes. Cover and into a cold oven.

I start the oven on 200c. After twenty minutes I turn in down to 165c and cook for three and a half hours. 

If you want to follow standard culinary procedure then brown the meat before adding to the pot. However I don't bother when I am cooking in a clay pot. The meat browns nicely as you can see in the picture.

Shawarma Al-Jazeera, a taste of my childhood

If you are one of the handful of people still reading my blog after couple of years of only occasional posts you might know I was born and lived most of my childhood in Saudi Arabia. I hope this would not offend any of my Saudi readers but I really hated the place. We used to live in Abha. It was at the time a small town high up in the mountains close to Yemen. The nature and weather were stunning but that is where the beauty stopped for me. I didn't like anything else about the place. I hated the lack of freedom compared to our summer holidays in Syria. I hated the constant feeling of being a foreigner, and as you might expect being a foreigner in Saudi Arabia is not fun.

The highlight of my life in Saudi was our frequent visits to Jeddah, Saudi's second city on the Red Sea. We used to visit frequently because of dad's work or to sort out some paperwork from the Syrian Consulate or simple to spend the weekend. Jeddah at the time was such a cool place for a young boy. It had an Ikea, massive shopping centres, smoked turkey meat, Levi's Jeans, Authentic Syrian Halawet el-Jeben, and above all Shawarma Al-Jazeera.

Shawerma Al-Jazeera or as became known later Shawerma Shaker Al-Jazeera is allegedly Jeddah's first Shawerma place. A small hole-in-the-wall places with massive beef shawarma skewer. It was perfectly normal for a guy to park his GMC Superban and come to the window to order 40 shawarma sandwiches. In fact most of the orders were in double figures and there was a constant stream of costumers from early evening to early hours in the morning. To cope with the demand the place adopteded a conveyor belt operation. You place an order in one window and the process start. One guy cuts the meat, another mixes it on the hot griddle with the vegetables, the third put the meat in the bread, the next down the line add the sauce and wrap the sandwiches and finally the last guy hands you over your food from a second window. This process continued non-stop, I kid you not. 

The Shawarma itself is nothing like the Syrian or Lebanese variety. The meat has a lot more "Arabic" taste with more spices adapted to the local palate. After the meat is shaved of the massive skewer it was cooked on a flat griddle with onions, parsley, tomatoes and chillies. The sandwiches were made with small white subs and served with nothing but tahini sauce and chilli sauce.

Here is my attempt to recreate a taste of my childhood:

Sirloin or similar tender cut of beef 350g

One onion

One large tomato

One or two green chillis

Garlic 3 cloves

Parsley two handfuls

Yoghurt one tbs

Tahini one tbs

Olive oil 2 tbs

Salt

Spices 1/2 tsp each (feel free to improvise) I use black pepper, paprika, allspice, ground ginger and ground coriander

Slice the meat and the vegetable as thin as you can. Take your time. It makes a lot of difference. It allows the vegetables and meat to cook at the same time without losing much liquid and give authentic shawarma feel to the final product (and it is also therapeutic if like me you had a s**t day in the office).

Mix all the ingredients together and let marinade for half an hour at room temperature. 

Heat a large skillet or other heavy-bottomed pan until very hot. Add the meat mixture and cook on high heat for 10-15 minutes until very little liquid is left. The secret to success is to use a hot very large pan. The meat mixture needs to spread evenly in a thin layer. If you don't have a large enough pan cook in patches.

Serve the meat in Arabic flat bread, pita pockets or sub rolls for an authentic experience. Serve with tahini sauce and a chilli sauce of your choice.

Mlehy, food of the brave.

When I started this blog two years ago I had two aims in mind, firstly to share my love of food and secondly, and most importantly, to show my beloved country Syria in all its beauty. To share with all of you everything good about the great Syrian people, about their cuisine, their life and their history. A propaganda website, not for a regime or government but for a land and city I love so much.

I promised myself to keep this blog politics free zone. I refrained from expressing personal views on anything that goes on in the Middle East. I wanted it a place for all people. Even food politics stayed out of my blog. No comments on Hummus war. No arguments on who invented Tabouleh, kebbeh or any of the sorts.

As you all know I haven't written anything on the blog for almost three months now since these sad events started to unfold in my beautiful country. I tried to write few times but words were choked in my throat. How could I keep politics out of this blog while my brave country men are being killed everyday on the streets asking for freedom. How could write about the beautiful things of Syria while its people are being arrested tortured and killed.

After some thinking I decided I should start writing again. The least I can do for my country is to go on writing. It is still a beautiful welcoming place regardless of who is in government. Time will come again when Syria is as beautiful and as peaceful as ever.

This post is dedicated to the brave city of Daraa and all the martyrs.

Fifteen hundreds years ago in a tent in the middle of the Arabian desert a Bedouin man named Hatim had guests stopping at his door unexpected. The man and his wife got in a state of panic. They had nothing to feed their hungry guests. It was a tough dry year and they had no sheep to slaughter in honour of the guests. Hatim decided to slaughter his pride and joy, the most valuable possession a Bedouin man can own, his horse to feed his guests. The man was Hatim Al-Taiy a sixth century Arabic poet. Because of that incident and many similar stories he became an icon of Arab generosity up to our day.

Generosity, honouring your guests and hospitality is an essential part of the Arabic psyche. Showing your generosity is as important as generosity itself. With very little resources and few food choices in the desert those days, meat was the only way to showcase your hospitality. You couldn't be an honorable host unless you slaughter some animal and serve an extravagant amount of meat in honour of your guest.

This tradition survived the centuries. Up till this day nothing can show your generosity more than heaps of meat served over large trays of rice. Kabseh in Saudi Arabia, Majboos in Gulf countries, Quzi in Iraq and Mansaf in Jordan are modern examples of this centuries old tradition.

Syria is slightly different case from its neighbours. It is a more ethnically and gastronomically diverse country. Rich resources and food variability mixed with a variety foreign influences over the centuries resulted in a more sophisticated cuisine. Smaller portions, variety of dishes, generous use of vegetables and less meat are the hallmarks of modern Syrian food.

That doesn't mean we Syrians don't have the traditional Arabic generosity running in our veins (well, most of us at least. We Damascene are not famed for our generosity!). Bedouin and tribal areas especially at the East of the country are as Arabic as anybody else. They share a lot more in cuisine and costume with their cousins across the Arabic desert than they do with their country men in Damascus and Aleppo.

Daraa and the wider Houran region extended over the border between Syria and Jordan is another "proper" Arabic area of Syria. People of the region are very generous and kind hearted despite not being the richest in the country. This generosity is evident in their food.

Mlehy is Houran national dish. It is a ceremonial dish for great occasions, weddings and celebration. It is the way people of Houran show their generosity to their guests. The dish is very similar to the better advertised Jordanian mansaf but it uses Bulgur instead of rice.

Melhy is made by cooking lamb (or chicken in less formal occasions) in a broth made with a stone-hard sun dried yogurt called Jameed or Ketha as it is called sometimes in Houran. Of course I didn't have any Jameed here in London (if you know where to get it in London please let me know) so I used the driest form of yogurt I could find, Labneh balls. You can buy these in all Middle Eastern Supermarkets. They are great for breakfast, sandwich filling or a mezze dish.

Finally, if this recipe looks nothing like what your mum used to make please forgive me. I only tried Mlehy once in my life and this recipe is my interpretation of the dish.

Here is my Mlehy recipe:
(Enough for four people)

Four Lamb Shanks
One onion finely chopped
Course bulgur 2cups
Chicken stock 1cup (or boiling water)
Boiling water
Ghee clarified butter 4tbs
Four Labneh balls
Allspice 1tsp
Salt
Pepper
One bay leaf
One stick of cinnamon
Pine nuts 30g

Start by mixing the Labneh balls and chicken stock in a food processor on high speed until you get a smooth runny mixture with no labneh lumps.

Melt two spoons of Ghee butter in a large pot and brown the lamb shanks on all sides. Remove the lamb shanks and fry the onion on medium heat till soft. Return the shanks to the pot and add the stock and labneh mixture. Top with hot water to cover the meat. Add the allspice, bay leaf, cinnamon stick and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a strong boil then turn the heat to medium and simmer for two hours or until the meat is fully cooked and almost falling of the bone.

Once the meat is ready start cooking the bulgur. In a pot add the bulgur, salt to taste and 3 cups of hot water and bring to boil. You can add a ladle or two of the meat broth to the bulgur for extra flavour. Turn the heat to medium and cook for 20 - 30 minutes stirring occasionally. Add more boiling water if required.

Fry the pine nuts in the rest of the ghee butter. Remove as soon as they turn golden as they burn very quickly. Continue to heat the ghee in the pan til it starts to smoke then carefully pour over the cooked bulgur and stir. The last step is optional and it adds a nice smokey flavour but few extra calories, your choice.

Serve the cooked bulgur with a sprinkle of pine nuts with the meat and broth on the side. The broth has a rich sour meaty flavours with a hint of fragrance from the spices. Pour some of it over the Bulgur to eat or simply sip it with a spoon. Delicious!

I am off to Syria!

Finally a holiday. I haven't been back home for a whole year. I have not done that since I first moved to London. I can't wait to get there tomorrow night and have my traditional just-got-out-of-the-plane dinner, Shawerma Arabi.

To all my regular readers, I am sorry I haven't been writing much and thank you for coming back to read the one or two posts I am managing to write every month. I have so much going on in my life at the minute. Way beyond what 24 hours day allows. Unfortunately the blog took the back seat. I really need to revive my blog and start writing again.

I will try to get as much videos and pictures during my two weeks break to write all about it when I come back. I will also try to write reviews on few new restaurants in Damascus I am planning to visit.

I really hope I will have time!

See you all in two weeks.

How much I miss Damascus!

For those who read my Kammun post, it is snowing in Damascus today.

Sirop

Most of my memories, happy and sad, are related to my teen years and early university. It was the best time of my life. I spent my childhood in Saudi Arabia with my family. I didn't like that place and the whole fifteen years I spent there are like a giant memory black hole. I hardly remember the place. I never speak about it and it doesn't feature in any way in my life. Moving back to Syria was the best thing that ever happened to me. New friends, new school and a huge sense of belonging to the place.

Now-a-days, part of every holiday I spend in Damascus is a visit to my teen years food haunts. The sights, smells and flavours bring back so many happy memories. The food occasionally doesn't live up to the memories but that might just prove how much our taste change as we grow older.

One place in particular is an exception. My memories of that shop dates back to my childhood. It was part of our summer holiday tradition to go with my mum to eat Sujuk sandwich in Sirop my favourite Armenian place on Al-Salehiyeh pedestrian street.

Sirop is a little gem of a shop. The place has not changed an inch since opened in 1963. The bright outside exterior takes you into this tiny shop. The smell of sujuk and pastirma spices fills the place and force into ordering couple of their tiny but absolutely delicious sandwiches. They serve a very small menu of sujuk, pastirma, Kashkaval cheese and Halloumi all served in small soft bread rolls pressed flat in a sandwich maker.

Apart from the great food the place is worth a visit just for the retro feel it offers. Their original cashier machine is worthy of a place in a museum. Next time you are in Damascus make the effort to go grab a sandwich. You will not regret it.

Syrian Foodie is One Year Old

A year ago I sat myself down and started writing. I always wanted to do something about my love of food. I couldn't do it as a job. I loved entertaining people and cooking dinners for friends but I wanted to do something more. I thought about blogging for sometime before I actually started writing, partly due to laziness and partly because I am a terrible writer. Writing was never my thing. I would struggle to finish half a page no matter what the subject is, a love letter or a scientific paper. My shawerma post remained an idea in my head for over a year. Then one day some bigoted ignorant homophobic person got me started.

This guy started this awful campaign on the net and it got me so angry. I always thought of the Syrian online blogging lot to be forward thinking liberal and tolerant. I was shocked to read the amount of ignorance and bigotry that came out of some people. But on the other hand my faith in the Syrian blogosphere was restored reading Abo Fares, Dubai Jazz and many other great Syrian bloggers replying to this awful campaign and standing up for freedom of choice. I got inspired, I decided it is about time to start my blog and I got writing. I am so glad I did.

This year has been great. The blog got to a slow start as expected, it took me two months till I reached 10 visitors in one day. I was delighted! Things picked up pretty quickly after that. More and more people noticed the blog and come back. Bit by bit, the word spread around and I started to have followers and regular readership. Many people helped a lot along the way with endorsements, links and blog posts, Thank you very much each and every one of you. A special thanks to Syria News Wire, Syria Comment and Line Attallah who had a great hand in this blog success.

Writing about such a niche market subject as Syrian cuisine suddenly makes me a world expert on the subject. I found my self giving quotes to magazines, filming an interview for a coming documentary and advising production companies filming programs in Syria. One of these shows will be on Discovery Channel in the near future.

Finally I would like to thank every person who followed this blog, read a post, left a comment and livened up a discussion. You made this year a successful satisfying experience worth every effort I put into it. Thank you.

Ful Nabit, Damascus favourite snack.

I went to a boys only high school back in Damascus. I had a great group of friends, ten of us, stuck together like conjoined twins. If one wants to buy a jeans all ten of us went to buy that jeans. If one needed a haircut we all went for a hair cut. One of the greatest characters in that group was Issam. This guy lives his life in slow motion. He talked slowly, laughed slowly and responded slowly but he had an edge to him. He was completely care free. He didn't care about school, didn't care if he gets in trouble, didn't care about teachers and didn't care about his family. Nothing on Earth seems to worry or trouble him.

In our tenth grade as part of biology studies, we had to keep a notebook. We did home work, extra curricular activities, biology drawings and stuff like that. You work on this book all through the year and you hand it towards the end of the semester to be marked. Our friend Issam didn't keep one and the day before the books were due to be handed he decided to borrow Abed's (another friend) book to copy it.

We left school and Issam decided to stop at the food seller on the corner to eat some Ful Nabit. Loads of kids were gathered around the Ful cart, somebody played a stupid joke, scuffle broke out and, true to form, my friend Issam dropped Abed's book in the large simmering ful pot.

We had such a good laugh the following day when we saw the hard crispy pages of the book. Even our biology teacher was in stitches when he heard the story. The only one who was not laughing was Abed especially when the marks came out few days later.


One of the best features of Damascus food scene is the endless number of street sellers offering all kinds of delicious snacks. On every corner of every street a man pushing a cart full of delicious grub. Food on offer changes according to the season. Mulberry juice, green almond, green plums, grilled chestnuts, corn on the cob boiled or grilled, Ma'arouk (sweet filled pastry), sugar cane, Tamari (thin rolls with grape molasses spread), prickly pears, and the list goes on and on. One snack in particular out-sells all others and is available all year round, Ful Nabit.

Ful is Arabic for broad beans or fava beans. I had a long think on how to spell it in English. I would have chosen "fool" as that how we pronounce in Syria but I usually stick with wikipedia spelling. They used "ful".

Ful Nabit is boiled fava beans served with salt and cumin. The seller cart will have huge pot with the beans slowly simmering. The beans are served in a proper glass or china bowls rather than paper wrap or a plastic plate, which I find adds a nice touch. to the experience. You usually get a glass of the cooking stock and half a lemon to accompany your ful. The cooking stock flavoured with salt , cumin and a squeeze of lemon makes a delicious (but not at all pretty) side drink.

Here is how to make Ful Nabit:

Dry fava beans 300g
Salt
Ground cumin

Soak the beans in plenty of cold water over night. Drain the beans and add to a pot with more cold water. Bring to boil then lower the heat and let simmer for about 90 minutes.

Cooking time will vary depending of the beans size and type so make sure you check the beans every once in a while. If you can squeeze the flesh out of the skin like a paste then you are ready.

To eat, bite the tip of the bean off and dip in salt and cumin. Squeeze the flesh into your mouth and discard the hard skin. It is not very sightly but it is delicious and truly addictive.

Making My Peace With Allspice

Allspice is an integral part of Syrian cuisine. You can hardly read a recipe of a Levantine dish that doesn't include allspice. It could be used on its own or more commonly side by side with black pepper.

With me it was a complete different story...

People in Damascus are not fans of hot spicy food to say the least. The majority of my fellow Damascene can't tolerate heat in their food even black pepper could prove a challenge to some. Me on the other hand grew up in Saudi Arabia. Food there was way more spicy and eating very hot chilli sauce next to food was the norm.

Allspice didn't feature in our food as a family. My mum didn't like it and we never had it in our kitchen. My mum cooked exclusively with salt and black pepper.

So a 12 years old me, smug and proud of the amount of hot chilli I can handle, I developed this firm belief that allspice is a lame spice for lame people who can't even handle black pepper. I carried this belief with me for most of my life. I never cooked with allspice. I never bought allspice. I never even mentioned allspice. This got to the degree my wife didn't even know that allspice exists in Syrian cooking.

Now I am older and wiser, I decided to give allspice a fair chance and I actually loved the results. It has a nice flavour and a beautiful aroma. It is not the naff brother of black pepper I always imagined, it is a nice spice in its own right!

Now I made my peace with allspice, I wonder what is next for me. May be the lamest of all spices Bharat Mshakaleh (that is mixed spice for those of you who don't speak Arabic).

Granddad, May Your Soul Rest in Peace.

I was in Syria for a 3 days visit last week. My granddad passed away after a couple of years struggle with COPD and heart problems. He passed away peacefully in his bed with his family around him. I was planning to go to Syria this weekend to see him for the last time but it was too late. Such is life.

My granddad was a great guy. Very honest and extremely straight he could only see the right side of life. He was so straight it verged on naive sometimes. He never told a lie and never backed down when he believed he was right. God bless you granddad. I miss you loads.

My granddad was one of the 5000 or so Chechen living today in Syria. They migrated from Chechnya in the Nineteenth century to Ottoman Turkey and from there to Syria, Jordan and Iraq to establish small communities that survived till this day.

Chechen are a tiny nation of the mountainous North Caucasus. They have been in a constant battle with their Russian occupier since the Eighteenth century. Their first resistance war led by Sheikh Mansour started in 1785 to last few years. The next big resistance war in 1835 led by Chechen legendary hero Imam Shamil lasted 24 years before ending with his surrender to the Russian army. The Chechen emigration that brought my maternal family to Syria followed this war.

Imam Shamil (below) and his surrender (above)

More Chechen rebellions followed in 1905, 1917, 1928 and a major upraise in the 1940s. This last rebellion ended up with the deportation of the entire ethnic Chechen people to Kazakhstan and Siberia on the orders of Stalin. They were allowed back to their homeland after 1956 but only after two third of them dying of cold and famine. A period of calm followed till the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early Nineties when two Chechen wars took place in 1994 and 1999. I am waiting for the next independence attempt in the next ten years or so. I can't think of another nation that fought that long or suffered that much for their freedom.

Granddad was born in 1924 in Al-Quneitra the main town of The Golan Heights in south west Syria. He grew up in the Chechen community of the predominantly Circassian town. He spoke only Chechen as a child to learn Arabic only in school. Unfortunately he didn't pass the language down to his children as my grandma who is ethnically kurdish didn't speak it. He moved to Damascus to complete his studies. He lived and worked between the two cities till he finally settled down in Damascus after Al-Quneitra fell under the Israeli occupation in the Six-Day War in 1967. Quneitera returned to Syrian control in 1974 as part of a seize fire agreement that followed Yom Kippur War. The Isreli Army totally bulldozered the city down and not a single building survived the systematic destruction. The family home my granddad grew up in lies today as a big pile of black volcanic stones. The vine tree ,that once covered the court yard and give my child granddad sweet grapes to pick and a cool shade of the hot summer sun, grows aimlessly today over the rubble.

He was a great story-teller. He loved Al-Quneitra. He could never stop telling me his childhood adventures, fishing, camp fires, stealing watermelons from neighbours field, and snow sledges to name a few. The stories of the later stages of his life were about horse racing, gun hunting and traditional Chechen dancing with girls in weddings. More serious stories were of Second World War, helping the Palestinian resistance in the early forties, dodging Hganah paramilitary gangs and nearly getting shot in the head only for his life to be saved when he leaned back to light up a cigarette. His friend died in that last indecent.

My granddad dream was to return one day to Quneitra and rebuild his family home. He dreamt of getting back his family vineyard in Abo Al-Neda Mount outside the town that is still under Israeli occupation till today. He wanted to build us his grand children a beautiful home to spend our summers in. He died without realising that dream.

I hope one day we will rebuild that house for you granddad. God bless your soul.

Shawerma, a personal journey.

This post is almost a year late. I first thought of starting this blog only to write this post.

On my last Holiday in Syria I went to eat shawerma with Mazen one of my best friends. He told me that Abo Fayyad the (almost historic figure) famous shawerma chef is working in a new shop in Mazzeh, Sheikh Saad, and they are selling shawerma sandwiches the old way.

We went there and to my great surprise it wasn't Abo Fayyad standing in front of the spit. It was his brother Abo Hisham. When I was in high school and all the way through Medical school I had hundreds if not over a thousand of sandwiches (I promise you I am not exaggerating) made by Abo Hisham. Although the two men made almost an identical sandwich it was only Abo Hisham for me, may be because of his pleasant personality and the fact he always called me "Doctor".

The shawrema sandwich those guys made looked like the primitive ancestor of the shawerma you can buy today in Damascus. It was bigger, the bread was thicker and the sauce was so runny they needed to put the sandwich in a tiny plastic bag so you don't end up with fat and sauce all over your cloths. It was delicious, nevertheless. The sandwich was the norm at that time. All the shops in Sheikh Saad (the shawerma destination in Damascus at the time) sold it to thousands of happy punters every evening till the early hours of the morning.

This sandwich is all but extinct now. It was replaced by the Medan (the current shawerma destination joint with Al-Qusoor Sq.) model. The thick bread from government run bakery has been replaced with much thinner "touristic" bread wrapped in another paper-thin-crisp-as-you-like Saj bread. The runny sauce is all gone and here comes stronger tasting garlic mayo sauce. The sandwich is more sophisticated and way better looking so it was only a matter of time till this format took over.

The cause of my beloved older shawerma version was not helped by the development of the Sheikh Saad area and the difficult nature of Abo Fayyad. After the two brothers moved from their original shops they never settled. It was a matter of few months before either the shop being knocked down or Abo Fayyad breaking up with his business partner.

As you can tell, shawerma had a great place in my heart (and a huge impact on my waist line). It was fantastic to eat a sandwich made be Abo Hisham exactly as it was ten years ago.