Thursday, July 12, 2012

Shawarma

 Thursday July 12, 10:15 a.m.

Met up with The Wild Guy yesterday at work. He was in quite a state after meeting me across from his company some 15 minutes late. Well, he's usually pretty intense to begin with and has been so for the 25 years I've known him, but he was particularly pissed off with the goings-on within his firm. It says something about our long friendship when he fairly screams out "I HATE MY JOB!"in the middle of the sidewalk, and I don't even flinch.
Anyways, once he calmed down, he took me over to his favourite shawarma place.
Believe it or not, yesterday was my first try of shawarma. Apparently, it's quietly become the lunch item of choice in Toronto over the past several months. Filled with all sorts of veggies, tahini and hot sauces, and chicken (in my case), it's an entire bento in a wrap. For my last few years in Japan, I often had a doner kebab in Akihabara...a pita stuffed with very much the same things. The shawarma, I found out, was basically the doner kebab on steroids. Back in the Winter, I read an article in which it was discovered that an average shawarma contains way more than enough calories to keep the body going for a day. Considering the average Canadian winter, this could become the essential dish to have, alongside poutine.

Yup, I gotta admit that I can get pretty addicted to this wrap. And at $4.95, it definitely beats my doner kebab in value since that cost about $7 CDN in Japan, and it's quite a bit smaller than the shawarma.