They’re not as popular here, for whatever reason, and it seems fewer make it into shawarma sandwiches. Whether the crunchy and sour cucumbers or pickled turnips, parsnips or radishes, pickles are abundant in Middle Eastern cuisine. They taste good, but it’s not what you find in the Middle East, and it’s not the way I prefer the chicken to be served. In the United States, shawarma often includes large chunks of chicken, nicely cooked but not thin or crispy. There should be more than a few extra-charred, fatty pieces in there. The chicken must be well-marinated, thinly sliced and crispy. It’s hard to find a shawarma I don’t like, but there are elements that I consider make-or-break. I should be further along, but a favorite popped up early so I’ve become a regular. I started in Lakeview, where I live, branching out a few miles in every direction. My list now holds eighty-seven restaurants, but I’m sure I’m missing a few. I made a list of the places I knew, asked social media for recommendations, and scoured articles and Yelp for mentions of shawarma. Why not? We’re in the middle of a pandemic. When I moved back to Chicago, I decided to attempt to try take-out from every shawarma joint in the city. Almost everywhere includes thin Middle Eastern pickles, which use smaller cucumbers than American pickles, and they’re less sweet, more sour and crunchier. In Erbil, Iraq, shawarma is often served in samoon, a pillowy eye-shaped bread, and topped with a heap of pickled vegetables such as cauliflowers and peppers. In Gaziantep, Turkey, the sandwiches include red cabbage, onions, sumac, and even toasted chickpeas. Some veer sweet, toward baking spices, while others are more savory. The marinating spices can include cinnamon, cloves, allspice, turmeric, coriander, cumin, sumac, cardamom and black pepper. It can be wrapped in a thin lavash bread or in a thicker pide, a Turkish flatbread. Sometimes it’s wrapped with French fries, or at trendy joints in Amman, melted cheese. Sometimes the sandwich is grilled after it’s wrapped, then sliced into pieces perfect for dipping in extra toum. The main differences are the spices and what people choose to put in the sandwiches.įor the past decade or so, I’ve been living between Chicago and other parts of the world, mostly different countries in the Middle East, eating all the shawarma I can get my hands on in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Oman and the UAE. While gyros and tacos veer from the original, döner and kebab are similar. The Ottomans first developed the method of grilling meat vertically on a spit in the nineteenth century, giving birth to döner kebab, shawarma, gyros and even al pastor tacos (Lebanese immigrants brought the cooking method to Mexico).