Taste Insight, “Tacos al Pastor” with Nicholas Gilman from Inside Mexico on Vimeo.

Forgive Y&H’s obsession with tacos this week, but I’ve been fascinated by the wealth of history behind this simple Mexican street snack. Take tacos al pastor. Many taquerias don’t prepare them the traditional way, which requires a vertical rotisserie like the ones you see in shawarma shops. 

In the video above, Nicholas Gilman explains the presence of these spits in Mexican taquerias. They’re legacies, it seems, of the Lebanese natives who brought them to Mexico in a wave of immigration in the mid-20th century. Mexican taco makers merely adapted them to a meat more common in Latino cuisine.

Not that I don’t trust Mr. Gilman, but I wanted to do some fact-checking on this page in culinary history, so I turned to Mark Miller’s excellent cookbook, Tacos. Miller, if you’ll recall, is trained both in anthropology and cooking. The father of Southwestern cuisine, Miller founded the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe and the late Red Sage in D.C.

Here’s what Miller says about tacos al pastor:

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As promised, I went back to Shawarma King last Wednesday, May 27, for a guided tour and meal with owner Butros Qumseya, who requested I give his restaurant a second go after he read my negative review in the Feed a few weeks back.

Disclaimer: Food critics eat anonymously because the average restaurateur, if given the chance, would make sure that a critic had the best experience possible at his restaurant; one that the average diner would not have. Seeing as I promised Qumseya to come by when the shawarma might be juicier, I do know, for a fact, that I was treated differently the second time around than when I wandered in off the street a few weeks back. I agreed to a second visit in part because I felt guilty for slamming his restaurant when it already had—among other things—location going against it. (Case in point: When I showed up Wednesday morning, someone had sloppily vandalized Shawarma King’s storefront using acid, which left clearly visible grooves in the glass.) But more importantly, I wanted to see if Qumseya was blowing smoke about the shawarma being better right around lunchtime than during the late afternoon. Qumseya refused—not once, but twice—to accept my money. I paid nothing for my meal.

Read More “Shawarma King, Revisited” »

I ate my first shawarma-type sandwich in Baku, Azerbaijan, where street vendors call the shaved-lamb-and-pita combo a döner-kebab and top it with cilantro, tomato, cucumber, a ketchup-like red sauce, and fresh herbs. Baku doesn’t have much else in the way of fast food (the city’s three McDonald’s franchises charge more for a combo meal than its nicest restaurants charge for sturgeon steaks and caviar), so perhaps I found the döner-kebab tasty only because there was no place else to grab a quick bite between classes. For a similar quick bite in Adams Morgan, I turned to a chicken shawarma from the Shawarma King. A friendly cook topped it with pickles, cucumbers, tomatoes, and some Tzatziki per my request, but the sandwich failed to help me recall my earlier experience. While seasoned well, the chicken was a tad mealy—a side effect, perhaps, of chicken not being as fatty as beef and prone to drying out. Overall, it was a boring meal. Perhaps my choice of toppings was partially at fault, but, frankly, this trend of encouraging customers to load their sandwiches willy-nilly is a terrible idea. As I learned from watching the street vendors in Baku, there’s an optimal way to prepare most dishes—from hamburgers to pizza to Caesar salad to shawarma. The topping bar may have contained a chicken-redeeming trifecta of fresh veggies, sauces, and preserves, but that’s not what ended up on my sandwich. A list of go-to topping combinations or a knowledgeable line cook could have turned my sad sandwich around, but that’s not what happens at Shawarma King.

It’s been a strange week for Young & Hungry. All you folks hiding behind computers seemed to prefer last week’s postings over this week’s. What’s more, Mr. Y&H took one day off to follow the meandering ambitions of Joe Englert. So, with those disclaimers, here’s the Top 5 of the week:

1. I’ve Eaten Enough Shawarma Now to Realize I Don’t Understand Shawarma
2. More Details on Ray’s the Steaks’ Opening Night Smoke Out
3. Smoked Brisket, Pork, and Sausage Available at…Wait for It…Whole Foods!
4. 701: A Restaurant Week Experience That Didn’t Feel Like One
5. Women Are Seduced by Men Who Cook, The Reverse Not So Much

My recent visit to Shawarma King, one of the new Middle Eastern sandwich joints in Adams Morgan, finally humbled me. As I sat there, chewing on yet another mediocre shawarma sandwich, its beef dry and its flavors as much sour as savory, I decided that I must be missing something. Or that my palate is too Americanized to appreciate this ubiquitous street food.

Read More “I’ve Eaten Enough Shawarma Now to Realize I Don’t Understand Shawarma” »

Without further ado, here are the week’s Top 5 posts (chopped down from the usual Top 10 in a symbolic offering to our increasingly nasty recession) from the Young & Hungry blog:

1. D.C. Restaurant Week Pushed Back to February *
2. Timmy G’s Ham Cruncher: The Sandwich That Glows
3. Want Some Shawarma? Head to Adams Morgan.
4. My Visit to Pat’s In Five Easy Pictures
5. Blagojevich Burgers: Available to the Highest Bidder

* Thanks to Gothamist, the No. 1 post for the week was actually this video.

Adams Morgan has suddenly become Shawarma Central. Walid Abuelhawa’s Old City Café & Bakery has been a reliable source for the Middle Eastern sandwich for more than two years, but now the former Amsterdam Falafelshop chef has some competition from two new shops: The Shawarma King at 1654 Columbia Rd. NW (202-463-8330) and the Shawarma Spot in the former M’Dawg Haute Dog spot at 2418 18th St. NW. (202-332-3797).

Read More “Want Some Shawarma? Head to Adams Morgan.” »