Hello, Hello, it’s good to…

*the phone rings*

“Shawarma Police speaking, who is this please”

“My name is not important. Listen up. Were you really going to start a blog post with…”

“Well let me interrupt YOU, sir, right there. These were CAREFULLY CHOSEN WORDS. I’ve not updated this blog in who knows how long, and as Oasis have just reformed, I thought I’d give the readers a bit of a cultural nod by referencing the first song off of What’s The Story (Morning Glory) at the beginning of a new post, called Hello. So there.”

“…”

“…”

“….err, you do realise that the line you typed originally came from another song?”

“err, let me think, oh. Oh. OH.”

*phone call immediately ended*

Hello!

Today’s review comes from Glasgow’s Trendy West End, and has happened quite by accident – Today’s plan was to go to Home Bargains to buy some Bullseye crisps, that’s right, Bullseye crisps, the internet told me they exist and provided photographic evidence:

But alas, there were no crisps, and instead I wandered over the bridge to Patrick, figured I’d walk into town, when suddenly I walked past Aye and thought “fuck it. Lunch!”

Wasn’t sure what to expect from the facade – whenever I see the words “loaded fries” next to each other I always think of the Bronski Beat advice “run away turn away run away turn away run away” as I am inherently distrustful of chips and cheese as a premium product, but they said they do döner kebab, so I stayed.

A neat enough inside, and a pleasant enough waiter, I ordered the mixed shawarma wrap to take away. “Ah”, he said, “is it the wrap you want, or the pitta?”

Well now, the pitta is a rare thing indeed! And no, I’m not talking about pitta breads you get in packs of six from supermarkets for a quid which low quality kebabberies believe are sufficient for the purposes of edible meat packaging – no I mean a proper pitta bread. Istanbul’s on Paisley Road West do very small ones – think of those but bigger.

Or, do you know what, I could just show you. Let unwap this. The first layer to come off is the plastic bag:

Next, the heat bag, revealing a smaller package inside, containing a tasty treat…

But what could be inside the pink and white sweeties bag? CLUE: Not sweeties. Let’s have a peek –

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, that’s filthy, frankly. Time to unsheath this beast.

There we are. The Turkish Pitta! It’s a… bun! Roll! Bap! Barm! (for a full list of what breads called, please refer to every viral twitter or Facebook post on the subject ever posted). – except it’s not. Let me explain – it’s clearly a leavened bread (i.e. it contained some yeast and was designed to rise to create fluffy goodness), but yet remains naturally wide and thin. Think of it as being similar to the German waffle breads but they don’t need to be artificially flattened.

Anyway, what’s it like, you ask. Here is half of it left – let’s dissect:

The kebab contains two sauces – one yoghurt – and one “red”. That’s all I could work out. The yoghurt one worked quite well actually, not at all garlicky but completed the meat very well. The red sauce was red and I can’t work out what it was – it wasn’t spicy at all so not chilli, and it wasn’t tomatoes as far as I could tell – answers on a comment!

The meat, and the salad – the pickled salad, they went and put the salad in the pickler fellas – was good, I guess these guys are going for the whole burnt ends thing – the ends being great for the lamb, not so much the chicken.

Looking at the whole picture, I think I’ve got an idea of what’s going on here – an abundance of sauce, meat super grilled, and those infernal “loaded fries” – is history repeating, like the dirty burger craze of the mid noughies – except, and this is a big except – this was actually good, and £7.50 in 2024 which is probably what you’d have paid for a burger back then. Plus I really did enjoy it, so there.

Next update: who knows.

Aye, Dumbarton Road (it’s opposite Kelvinhall Subway and to the left)

Mix Shawarma in a pitta – £7.50

8.5/10