Review #5: Shawarma Barlow

I had tried this place once before, but it was a while ago. I decided to revisit it today, and I hope it is better than my memory lets on. Will it be though?

In terms of customization, this place is quite good! With these options, customers WILL get the donair they want. The only thing I feel could have been better is the size options, as there are only two, but that is okay as long as options are there and the options taste great!

This place, like some others, uses Siracha as a hot sauce; while this, as you may know, gets me down right away, the other sauces and spread options have a chance to balance that out and secure a good score.

All said, my order was a beef donair with hummus and garlic spreads, tahini, donair, and siracha sauces, and lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickled turnips, banana peppers, cabbage, and cheese.

All of these lovely toppings listed above are held within the wrap. But how is the wrap itself at Shawarma Barlow? For this donair, the wrap is more of a burrito style than a pita. I for one like this style as it goes all the way around–no muss no fuss. What I dislike about this particular wrapping is its toughness. It gets in the way at times. While it has a decent flavour, I don’t wanna chew on that and it takes away from an otherwise good bite. At least I know my toppings will stay put! 6.5/10

The best part of this donair, hands down, was the beef. It is seasoned and flavourful, and really quite tender. It seems to be prepped in chunks rather than slices, but with how tender it is this beef can get away with being a little chunky. Not a lot else to say though! Good beef all around 7.5/10.

The toppings were nothing memorable–not in a good way anyways. The pickled turnips were at times overpowering, but at least provided good colour along with the cabbage and onions.

One topping that did not have a good colour was the banana peppers. My god. If I get sick from something here it will be those. When I think banana peppers I think fresh taste and vibrant colours. These had an okay taste, weren’t prepped very well, and had a most unpleasant colour–like snot after a sinus infection. I’ll pass on the sinus infection, and pass on these peppers should I return. Too much pickling without a heads up.

The tomatoes are at least well prepped and aren’t in unmanageable slices. The cheese however was clumped in globs in some places rather than being evenly spread out. Overall toppings get a 6.5/10.

Speaking of spread out, I had trouble locating the spreads and sauces in this wrap. I think the spreads get overpowered by the pita, and I could not even sense the presence of Siracha. The only heat I got was minimal, and it was from the peppers. I’d see something red and think to myself ‘Mah Gawd; that’s Siracha’s music!’ But no–tomatoes.

I think the tahini sauce and garlic spreads were the strongest, but fighting against a crippled siracha and other absentees is no true feat of strength. 6.5/10.

Overall it was not a bad experience, but not really a good one either. I felt there was a good balance and distribution of most of the ingredients, but there was really nothing memorable. Shawarma Station has a strong sauce game; Little Lebanon and Jimmy’s have great meat; even King of Shawarma has a good wrap. Shawarma Barlow has decent meat, chewy wrappings, missing sauces, and snot coloured banana peppers.

This order cost me 11 dollars, and it was not worth that much for me by a long shot. I’d skip this place. 6.5/10 for the overall experience and aspects like distribution and price.

So, the final scores are: pita wrap with a 6.5/10, the meat, the saviour of this dish, with a 7.5, the toppings with a 6.5, the sauces with a 6.5, and the other aspects and overall experience with a 6.5/10. With a +3 bonus from customization, the total comes to 36.5/50, or 7.3/10.

Join me again sometime, as I desperately try to recover from the sight of those banana peppers.

Review #4: Jimmy’s

So there has been a lot I have heard about this place–some good, and some not so good. Today I went with some friends to try out the donair at the SAIT location for myself. The place was really nice, but how were the donairs? Keep reading to find my opinion!

So, starting with my order and customization, I was honestly a little let down. If you order through Skip The Dishes there are more options. Pickles, for example, were never offered to me in person, but they are listed as a topping online. Kind of odd, but whatever. Jimmy’s in person doesn’t give a damn about your pickles, and I dom’t give a damn about my pickles either so that worked out well.

There were 3 sizes, with the smallest being 10 dollars. While the small was indeed quite large, it is still on the pricey side. In terms of veggies, there is a total of four options: lettuce, tomatoe, onions, hot peppers. This kind of killed my buzz. Where was the cabbage? I am accustomed to that burst of colour at this point, but whatever. What really shocked me was the overall choice of sauce… there was a sweet sauce applied as a spread to the pita… and hot sauce… that is it. No hummus. No tahini… just a general lack of options. For this reason, the customization bonus will only be a 2 instead of a 3, as the sauce choices were limited to say the least. But Jimmy’s could still make up for it! If the donair is perfection customization is for the dogs. Woof woof.

Starting with the pita wrap itself, this donair starts to fall short of perfection. The wrap is a legit pita, which I always like. However, while I usually enjoy wraps because of their ability to soak up sauce, this wrap didn’t exactly have a lot of sauce to soak up!

The usual problems of using a real pita arise in this wrap as well–thickness and a lack of total coverage do not really help this donair live up to its expectations. Overall not bad, just nothing special. It’s a pita and that’s it. 7/10.

The meat was easily the best part of this wrap. Holy tender batman; this is some good meat. The slices are tender–perhaps the most tender I have seen to this point. The seasoning is also quite good. Plain and simple it is just good meat; it is well prepared, good quality, and has some good seasoning. 8/10.

While the donair is stuffed full of meat (they don’t shy away from using meat at Jimmy’s) the veggies are still fresh enough and vibrant enough pop. The veggies are well prepped for the most part, but I still feel the tomatoes could be presented better. Slices could be thinner, or it could be diced instead. I just wish there were more options, but sometimes simple works well too! 7.5/10 for the toppings.

The sauces is where I feel this wrap fell short. If you just love the meat of Jimmy (which I know is the case for a lot of customers) this could be a non-issue, but I honestly was just left wanting more.

The sweet sauce felt lost at times, and while the hot sauce had a good kick at times, I am shooketh that the only real sauce is just siracha. Give me a reason to give you a better sauce grade, Jimmy. 6.5/10.

It was pretty good overall for sure, but I feel it could have been better. The aspects of the wrap that were present were honestly quite good, as reflected in the grades of the meat and the toppings, but it is what was missing that hurt the overall experience.

After trying this many donairs from around the city there are certain expectations I have of a donair, and I just feel like Jimmy’s fell short of some of those expectations.

Balance was off at times, as the donair was quite beef-heavy in comparison to the veggies. Unlike at other places, *cough* King of Shawarma *cough* the beef was well seasoned and the veggies still managed to pop through.

At a lower price, a little more put into the pita, and more sauce options the experience could have been improved, but as I have been saying, it honestly wasn’t bad and gets a 7.5/10 for its other aspects.

Overall, the pita wrap itself is nothing special and gets a 7/10. The beef is nice and scores an 8. The toppings manage to pop, but are limited so they score a 7.5. The sauces are suuuuper limited and are, in my opinion, lazy–6.5. These numbers, along with a 7.5 for overall experience and a bonus 2 for customization, the score comes to 38.5/50 or 7.7/10.

Biggest pros: Great meat and veggies–easily some of the best donair fillings I’ve had to this point

Biggest cons: Uninspired sauces and pita wrap. Just super basic and a let down

If you have been following along with my reviews, this is the same score as King of Shawarma. If I had to pick between the two I would go with Jimmy’s no question. Customization and a good pita can only get you so far compared to really good meat and veggies.

Review #3: King of Shawarma

Not to be confused with Shawarma King, this place loves their meat… maybe a little too much. A friend gave a shoutout to this place so I gave it a try. So many donairs in the last few days–will this place rise to the challenge and prove why it is king?

Well, in terms of customization, no. But whatever a donair can still be good without it being exactly how I want it.

King of Shawarma did have options, but they were odd options–only small and large for sizes is like having the choice to adopt a yorkie or a german shepherd; I chose the small because I am scared of big dogs… logic. Really wish there was a middle ground though, and the same can be said for the sauces.

Two of the sauces are listed as mild (flavour hot sauce and green chili hot sauce) and the other option is no joke called the SUPER HOT SAUCE. That is the name, but I added caps to show just how intimidated I was by that.

The choices of veggies could make up for this gap in a medium hot sauce, as there are both jalapenos and banana peppers, but damn–just make a sauce called “not super hot sauce” and it will appease me.

Speaking of things that rhyme with appease and slant rhyme with me, this place has cheese! The cheese add is also set at a lower price than at the wallet-smashing rate of Little Lebanon.

Really the selection of toppings made up for everything else, as there is quite an array of choices. My final product was a small donair, with garlic spread, hummus spread, tahini sauce, donair sauce, green chili sauce, and flavoured hot sauce. The toppings I chose were lettuce, cabbage, banana peppers, parsley, tomatoes, onions, and cheese.

The pita wrap, my goodness… best part of this in my opinion. It is thin so it doesn’t get in the way of other flavours–so thin I could see the cabbage through the top. In addition to its thinness, it is also crispy which is a great textute to bites that otherwise seem to be all meat (spoiler.) Most importantly, when it does crack because of its thin and crispy nature, there is a second layer to ensure the ingredients don’t spill out like BP oil. 8/10.

The meat was, unfortunately, nothing special. The cuts were a good size, almost chunks more than slices. These chunks, however, needed more seasoning–plain and simple. Instead of seasoning the meat to bring out its flavour, King of Shawarma decided a better idea was to just put in twice as much meat. That works, right?…. right?

No. Most of the time it felt like the meat was taking over the dish, but with a lack of seasoning to back it up it was like a political takeover after colonial rule–mostly disappointing. 7/10.

We interrupt this somewhat boring blog for a not boring public service announcement: The tomatoes have gone missing!

I had to get almost to the bottom of the wrap before finding a piece of tomatoe, but at least it wasn’t an unwieldy chunk like at other places.

The tomatoes were not the only veggie MIA. I also found there was very little banana pepper and very little onion.

The cheese was distributed evenly for one of the first times ever though! Bless up for that, friendos.

The cabbage was, as always, good for the usual reason; it is a colourful goddess. Cabbage and lettuce were the only veggies I didn’t need a search and rescue mission to find, but that does not make up for the fact that so many veggies were neglected. I didn’t order a whole steak. 6.5/10.

In terms of sauce, getting the occasional kiss from the tahini or sweet sauce was not only the most action I’ve gotten in years, but it was good action at that. If all sauces had pulled their weight and matched with these two (garlic spread gets an honourable mention too) this section would have recieved an 8. I had the garlic. I had the sweet. I NEEDED the spicy. The spiciness was constant around a 5, but I would have liked it closer to a 6.5 at times, and the hotsauce selection really let them down. 7/10.

The distribution was as good as it could be, considering the donair was 80% meat, but the lack of veggies killed them in the long run. It was still a decent wrap for 8.99, but not the best, but I was expecting more. King of Shawarma? Maybe, but certainly not the king of donairs. Overall experience is a 7/10.

In the end, the donair from King of Shawarma recieves an 8/10 for the wrap, a 7 for the meat, a 6.5 for the veggies (some of which are still being searched for) a 7 for the sauces, a 7 for other aspetcs, and a bonus 3 for customization. This brings the total to 38.5/50 or 7.7/10.

Until next time (hopefully Friday!) good eating, and keep the families of those lost veggies in your prayers.

Review #2: Little Lebanon

With its location close to Westbrook LRT station I had frequently seen this place during my commute, but had never been. We can safely say that my first experience did not let me down!

Customization options were certainly present for the donair wraps with good choices for veggies. I wish the sauce choice had been more varied though. The only sauces available were garlic sauce, sweet sauce, siracha hot sauce, and hummus.

The veggie selection is great and leaves almost no stone unturned. I wish cabbage was present, but there are other options to make up for its absence. There is also the option for cheese; however, the price to add cheese was over 2 dollars–about a quarter of the price of the whole regular donair.

After picking from the 3 sizes my order ended up being a regular donair with lettuce, banana peppers, pickled turnips, tomatoes, onions, parsley, and all the sauce options.

First, addressing the pita is necessary as always, as it is the skeletal structure of the wrap. The wrap for this is a real pita, and it is quite thick. I was at first worried that it would overwhelm some of the flavour just because it is so thick, but it absorbed spices and sauces from elsewhere in the wrap and was quite nice. One issue I had with this pita was that it did not close at the bottom, so it is a little messy. It could have also been grilled a tiny bit more just to add some texture. 7/10.

The meat itself was some of the best I have had. This place does not shy away from piling on the meat either. The seasoning isn’t too subtle that it over powers other aspects of the wrap, but it is enough to let the beef be a big part of the dish. The preparation of the beef was well executed. While some pieces were longer than I would have liked, the beef was tender enough that I never found myself chasing my bite like going after a really long noodle, and the pieces were thin so they were still quite manageable. 8.5/10.

The toppings all tasted very fresh. In previous reviews I have not been a fan of the tomatoes, as they have sometimes been too chunky and even unwieldy, not being diced at all. While some of the chunks from Little Lebanon were a little bigger than I would have liked, they had seasoning! No watery tomatoe rubbish here!

The turnips too are often presented in larger chunks, but they are so soft it is like the beef–no chasing the bite like a long noodle.

The fresh banana peppers add a kick that is sometimes missing due to the general tameness of the siracha sauce. The banana peppers also had great colours, along with the lettuce and the turnips. Veggies get a 7.5/10

The sauces here were for me, unfortunately, one of the weakest points! While the garlic sauce and sweet sauce worked well, I was hoping for more from the hot sauce than just plain siracha. It could have been more original and more spicy, but the sauces still worked well with the turnips, pita, and meat. 7/10.

Overall the experience was good! A good size, but holy cow does it get messy. I found myself with a puddle of veggies and sauce falling and being caught by the paper, but there was an even distribution of ingredients from start to finish. A solid buy for only 8.50

The biggest pros: meat, fresh veggies

Biggest cons: hot sauce, messy wrap

In conclusion, the wrap gets a 7/10, the meat gets the highest grade at an 8.5, the toppings get a solid 7.5, sauces pick up a 7, and the other aspects of the dish get a 7.5, for a total of 37.5/50. With the +3 bonus for its customization, the final score is 40.5/50 or an 8.1/10.

Review #1: Shawarma Station

For my first review I decided to investigate a good acquaintance of mine–Shawarma Station. Without further delay, let’s begin!

First, we can look at the customizability of the donair wrap at Shawarma Station:

First, 3 sizes is always nice. There is not a huge selection of toppings–only 5–but there is a good selection of sauces. As someone who dislikes pickles with a burning anger, I am always glad for customization options. Adding cheese is never something at which to scoff either. After putting my own flair on the donair, my order is as follows: a regular donair, with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, cheese. For sauce I selected sweet sauce, garlic sauce, tahini sauce, and spicy hummus.

The reason I chose not to include the spicy sauce is because I hear it is quite spicy, and really I just wanted to enjoy this–maybe another day. In terms of hummus, I chose not to include the regular, as I figured the spicy hummus would be enough.

Next, one can examine one of the most important aspects of the donair–the pita itself. As the vehicle for the ingredients, it can still play a vital role. I feel Shawarma Station took a risk with thay vital role.

The wrap is thin, so it doesn’t interfere with the overall taste of the dish. I like that. It is crispy and adds a nice texture that would otherwise be missing. I like that. It is so thin it has rips and holes throughout the pita, and is sometimes bent over by the weight of meat. That is the shit I don’t like. I think that if it had no holes it would honestly be a very good pita, but unfortunately its grade is a 6.5/10.

If the wrap is the skeletal system of the donair, the meat is the heart. The beef at Shawarma Station has a great seasoning to start with. At some places I have been, the meat has been in not only thick slices, but in large slices. That is not the case at Shawarma Station and I am glad; the meat is presented in easy to handle slices and I do not find myself pulling chunks out like a string of pasta that just will not end. Pasta string… that is a technical term, right? Regardless, Shawarma Station’s donair meat is a solid 8/10 for me.

What donair can be complete without its extra toppings though? Just a pita and meat sounds… pitaful (sorry not sorry.)

The onions in the wrap were never too overwhelming, and are likely the best prepared vegetable topping in the wrap other than the cabbage. Both the cabbage and the onion are, like the meat, in very good sizes–never too chunky or too thin. The cabbage holds the sauce very well and adds a pop of colour to an otherwise bland-looking dish.

Unfortunately not all toppings were as well prepared as the cabbage and onion. First, the lettuce is close to as good as the cabbage in its preparation, but there were a few chunky bits.

The cheese would be present in some bites, overpowering the taste, and be absent in others. The cheese works best as a backup singer to the sauce and the meat, as it really does work quite well with those aspects, but often I found my bites had not enough or too much.

The same can be said for the tomatoes, which I would say are the weakest part of this donair. They are just slices–thick slices. They are not diced up like the onion, and as a result they would be half in, half out my mouth as I take a bite–either falling on the floor for my roommate’s dog to devour, or left in my mouth to overpower the bite. Overall, I cannot say that the toppings were bad; they just could have been better than a 7/10.

Some of my favourite parts of this dish were the sauces; they work in a really good harmony. The tahini sauce and the sweet sauce balance well with the meat, cabbage, and spicy hummus.

The spicy hummus itself is just that–spicy hummus. It is nothing too special, but sometimes the heat can creep up after a couple of bites, and it can linger anywhere from a spiciness of 3 to a comfortable 6.

The garlic sauce may be the key to all of this in my opinion as it adds a zing that could otherwise be missing due to the not-overwhelming onion chunks. These sauces work in harmony to earn a solid 7.5/10.

Overall, my only qualms with this donair are the pita and the distribution of ingredients.

The pita honestly wasn’t that bad; the holes were not too big and there was no egregious rip, but it certainly took away from the experience.

The distribution of ingredients was one of the more flagrant offenders of this dish. At the top of the donair, the meat, veggies, and sauce were in a good balance. However, as I got to the bottom of the donair, I found myself gettings bites of only meat or only veggies. This was an issue for me as I enjoyed the ingredients best when they worked together. Balance, size, and experience recieves a 7/10 grade.

In conclusion, Shawarma Station’s donair recieves a 6.5/10 for ita pita, an 8 for its meat, a 7 for the toppings, a 7.5 for its sauce, and a 7 for its other factors. This gives it a total score of 36/50, and after the +3 bonus for its customization options, the final score is a 39/50, or a 7.8/10. I feel like better prepared tomatoes and a more stable pita wrap could easily push this donair above and beyond an 8. Still a decent score considering the pricetag of 10.80 though!

Until next time, good eating!

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

So you’re here; that is cool! I hope you are here because you enjoy donairs as much as I do, and hopefully I can help you find the perfect bite. To judge these bites I will be evaluating based on customization, pita wrap, toppings, meat, sauce, and overall experience.

I will be aiming to review a donair a week, but as a broke student on a diet I can make no promises. Despite that, join me on this adventure, will ya!?