From Dearborn to D.C., my quest for the perfect shawarma is a deep passion rooted in Americana as much as apple pie itself. Growing up in Ohio, minutes from the Michigan border, the drive to Dearborn Michigan was less than an hour, a short jaunt that was taken so often it really was a part of our family’s grocery shopping routine.
My hometown mosque was founded in the early 1900s by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, one of the oldest Islamic centers in America. And every Sunday when religious learning classes were held & families gathered to listen to a sermon, some of the community’s Lebanese grandmothers would gather in the massive industrial kitchen on the first floor and cook and bake endless Lebanese traditional foods, from fatayer, to kibbeh, to the most coveted of all: shawarma.And so my tastebuds became indulgently spoiled by the rich heritage of five generations of tradition fervently maintained, perfected, and passed down folded into the layers of dough, sauce, and meat.
To say that I am a shawarma elitist is an understatement. Shawarma is not a simple sandwich, it is a level of food delicacy that is either done properly or not done well at all, there is no in between. To understand this, one must have had a proper shawarma sandwich to then understand how this is so.However, finding a shawarma on the level that is worthy of consuming outside of the capital of Arab America (Dearborn Michigan & surrounding areas including my hometown of Toledo) has been a tireless quest, one that has proven itself exhausting and difficult.
Instead, I set out to recreate this delicacy within my own home. I had worked as a sous chef for countless hours with the Lebanese grandmother’s in my mosque’s kitchen, and though they had not explicitly taught me the steps, the memory of the recipe lived in the measurements of my eye’s gaze and the touch of my fingertips as I assisted them in the past.
As I set out to recreate this recipe, my hands and eyes took charge, guiding me through the depths of trial and error until I achieved at last the very flavors my soul yearned for, a taste of home. This recipe has become one I take great pride in, as being able to transport the iconic Dearborn shawarma into my own home is no small feat. I present to you a component of American food history, a taste of the pride and joy of the Midwest, my recipe for chicken shawarma.
