- 14 hours ago
Bon Appétit joins Chef Meherwan Irani in Delhi to explore how Al-Bake Shawarma has transformed a Middle Eastern classic into an Indian street food legend. From a massive rotating spit of chicken to a closely guarded 25-spice blend and an unexpected swipe of mayo, this iconic spot shows why shawarma has become one of India’s most popular street foods.
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00:00Wild! We're in Delhi, India, New Friends Colony here at Albaik Shwarma, the most famous shwarma
00:09place in all of the city. They're about to put 220 pounds, give or take, of raw chicken onto a
00:14shwarma spindle. Let's go see how they do it. So this is where the prep is happening. There's a
00:21lot of chicken in here. Let's go check it out. This is just the first one. We're going to go
00:26through about three of these in a day. So he's sliding across the surface. You've got to get the
00:30bottom locked in to the spindle and the top locked into the spindle. He's obviously done this a few
00:35times. Look at that, man. There's guys right now with trailer hitches that are admiring the precision
00:40work that just happened here. All right, well that was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
00:46I was waiting for an avalanche of chicken to hit me in the face, but it's in. It's locked. They're
00:51going to fire up the grill. I love that the grandpa, the start of the business, is tweaking
01:01the flame right now. So this is a gas lit fire, but what's really cool about the way a shwarma fire
01:06works is the burners are vertical and there's a grate in front of it. And you're essentially
01:13heating the element. That grate quite often is ceramic or just metal or something that can heat up and
01:19retain the heat. So you're cooking more with an infrared type heat in addition to obviously the
01:24direct flame. It's not direct flames leaping out and kissing the meat. It's just this buildup of a
01:29infrared style heating element. Oh yeah. It's just getting warm and I can already feel the heat
01:35radiating off of it. In about five minutes this thing's going to be just giving me a tan on one side
01:40of my face. I mean right away you're seeing it's not those drippings now is not just liquid. A little bit
01:46of fat starting to already render and start to drip down. As the fat renders out the skin that's in
01:52there it's going to basically thin up and get crispy on the outside on the part that he slices off.
01:56So you're not going to get these sort of fatty bits of skin that I know some people don't
02:00particularly like chicken skin that way. I love crispy fatty chicken skin. Are you kidding me?
02:04But with that fat rendering out no different than rendering out the fat let's say in a duck breast
02:08you're going to end up with bits of little bits of chicken skin in each slice that are going to be just
02:12crunchy and delicious and give all that flavor all that umami. I was waiting for this thing to start
02:18doing it spinning. It is not an automatic spindle because that would be too easy. He's just going
02:23to keep spinning the grill with his patented spinner tool implement. Basically the knife with which he's
02:28going to be cutting. This is an incredibly thick spindle of meat. I mean it is about a foot and a half
02:34across maybe even two feet across in width. So there's no way no matter how hot this fire is that it's
02:39going to cook all the way through. That's not the point. The point is just to cook the exterior layer
02:44enough to where it slices off easily and then as it hits the flat top that's where it gets fully cooked.
02:50You can see the exterior char is starting to happen and once we get an even char like this all around
02:57the exterior that's when it's going to start slicing. While we have a second here let me see if I can talk to
03:03the proprietor of the store and find out the secret of what's in the marinade. I don't know if you'll tell me
03:09or not. This is my brand. I know it's your brand. I understand your brand but let me ask you some basic
03:25questions. Is there ginger garlic in there? Ginger garlic? Adrak Lassan? Maybe, maybe not.
03:32Maybe not. Green chilies? Maybe. Maybe, maybe not. I can tell you only 25 ingredients is inside. 25 ingredients
03:44that's all we know. Yeah. We got the kernel beet. What's the kernel got? Seven spices and secret herbs
03:50and seeds? Eleven? 25 ingredients. 25 ingredients. Yeah, India is not for beginners as I say often. If you come
03:58and take a peek the cash register and the proprietor are sitting less than three feet from where the
04:05shawarma is cooking. At any point he can bend over look around and see how the empire is doing based
04:12on how the spindle of meat here is cooking. This is like posting up in the kitchen basically because
04:17that's that's it. That's the money. Okay so now you can see the first slicing starting to happen. As you can
04:23see the meat is not cooked all the way through. It's not meant to be cooked all the way through. The cooking is
04:28going to happen on the platform over here and also as he's slicing off the big chunks that are sticking
04:32out he's evening out the shawarmas and that way the slices will be more uniformly cooked. The fat's
04:39starting to render and some of the juices are dripping off but as they drip off they're hitting
04:43the surface where the chicken's cooking. So you're getting that schmaltz that chicken fat and the chicken
04:48juices and the marinade. None of it's escaping or being wasted. It's hitting the flat top and caramelizing
04:55along with the chicken that's sitting on the sort of flat griddle over here and uh and just helping
05:00add that flavor back into the chicken. So we're not losing anything. We're not losing any drippings
05:05onto charcoal or onto the bottom of the grill. Smells incredible. I mean I wish you'd tell me what's in
05:10it. I would use this marinade back home. What are you doing? 20? This guy's been doing it for 20 years.
05:21He looks like he's 20. So there's no way this is an off-the-shelf contraption. I mean this is something
05:28that was custom built for this purpose. This looks like a custom rig and this box is definitely a custom
05:33rig box. There's a propane tank somewhere keeping this going hot. We use the word jaguar a lot. That's
05:38basically to Magyra something to kind of like duct tape and bubble gum and and chicken wire something
05:44and most contraptions like this is jaguar. There's actually and I'm not making this up a half a brick
05:50used here as a leveling device for the spit so it doesn't tilt over when you come out of the side
05:55and see it. You can tell that the metal down here corroded and that brick is the only thing holding
06:00this oh I don't know 1100 degree fire furnace up and make sure we don't all kill ourselves.
06:06But this is how India works. It's held together by the most humble of things and it works.
06:18So if you can hear me what's happening right now is the the best way to describe it is the
06:25massacre of the meat. It's the chopping of the meat right now. Essentially we're making
06:30almost like a keema out of this. A mincemeat out of this. That is sort of a very traditional way
06:35in India for meat often to be served is in sort of a mince form. It's probably doing a couple things.
06:40It's probably making sure that there's an even cook and it's making sure that all the different
06:43textures the Thai meat, the leg meat, the breast meat are all incorporated. Tenderizing making sure
06:49the juices get all reincorporated back to it and makes it easy for them to portion and serve.
06:54All right so all this chopped meat is actually going to go from here right up over here
06:58to the assembly line. So once he's done, a portion of it comes out over here to the assembly section
07:06where this too is a heated flat top and this is where the little shawamba rolls are coming up. So
07:10it's not just a bowl of that meat. It's actually being transformed into these little rolls. I mean
07:16the best way to describe them is they're about the size of like little baby tacos like little taquitos
07:20done on this flour. So they've got a really efficient system. Meat being cooked, brought forward,
07:25and then assembled. And this is amazing. They're adding fresh onions and fresh cilantro. So this
07:30is the final freshening of the meat, seasoning it up, making it delicious. All of these onions are
07:35going to get chopped into the meat to where it's unrecognizable that there were even onions there to
07:40begin with. And the onions are also sizzling on the flat top and cooking in the chicken pan,
07:45cooking the chicken oil. I mean you know the smash burgers that are becoming so popular everywhere
07:50where the onions are being griddled on the flat top, essentially that's what's happening here.
07:54All right, an order's about to come. Let's see what he's doing. So he's been making these like mini
08:00tacos, like little taquitos if you will, and serving them as an order. There we go. A little swipe of
08:07the mayonnaise. Some of the meat inside rolled up. That is the most fluid efficient motion that I've ever
08:15seen when it comes to applying mayo to a piece of flatbread. That is remarkable. This is what's made
08:21them famous. The bread, it's not a roti. They make it in-house in a separate location. It's their own
08:26recipe. It's essentially kind of like a lavash or a pita, but obviously not a pocket. Super thin,
08:32and this is the magic.
08:36Dude, it's a tortilla. This mayonnaise part is completely unexpected. Like,
08:41I would never have guessed that that's the secret ingredient here. It makes complete sense. I mean,
08:46you know, think of a roast beef sandwich or a chicken sandwich or a turkey sandwich. How the
08:50mayo just adds that fat. But instead of butter, instead of chutneys, instead of ghee, instead of
08:55yogurt, it's mayonnaise. And it really makes sense because they really are trying to differentiate the
09:00flavor profile of this dish from the typical Indian grilled meats that usually have a North Indian
09:04style flavor. This has definitely got a real Middle Eastern vibe to it, but done in India street food
09:09style. So I'm so excited to try one of these. This operation is facing the customers. The table I'll be
09:17sitting at is literally three feet away from where this is happening. So the clacking, the noise, the
09:23smell, the grill, the steam, the smoke, it's all part of the show. And it's not just for show. It's
09:29obviously a very efficient system. And the customers standing over here know that their food is coming
09:35directly from this flat top. So you know, it's fresh. It's not being made in secret in the back
09:39somewhere. It's not coming out of a refrigerator. It's not being microwaved. It is trauma the way
09:45it's supposed to be. This is my favorite part about this kind of cuisine. You get to see your food being
09:51made. All right, I'm going to go place an order at the counter and see how this works.
09:54Hello, sir. One order. Let's see. Five piece. Five piece. Yes, please. For here. Yeah. How much? Five. So what are you doing over there? Oh, you give him the plate for the order. Yeah, yeah.
10:13So you are taking the money and expediting the order. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:16Five hundred? Five hundred. Five hundred. There we go. Seems like a bargain. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. And now where do I go? Oh, it's ready? I will give you. Oh, you'll give it to me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:29I love this. One stop shop. You place the order and the owner gives you food. And he's not doing this for me. This is for everybody. This is how it works. Yeah, same, same, same. Same for everybody. No special treatment. No, no, no, no. And extra mayonnaise. Yeah, extra mayonnaise. If you want
10:42something chutney like this. You can have chutney also. But what do you what do you recommend? Just like this. No, if you are Indian, you must eat chutney. Okay, I'm Indian. I must eat chutney.
10:56What kind of chutney is this? Chili sauce. A chili sauce. Many ingredients there. Of course, there's many ingredients. How many ingredients? If you eat. Okay, let's do it. 500 rupees. This is a feast.
11:09This guy here is calling my name.
11:17That is so simple and all flavor.
11:23It gets everything you want meat wrapped in bread to be.
11:26Nothing between you and the meat.
11:29I mean,
11:30this is
11:33wild.
11:36How something so simple
11:38tastes so complex
11:41and so delicious.
11:44I literally
11:45inhale that.
11:46You can see the flex of fresh cilantro on the inside.
11:49A little bit of mayonnaise.
11:50And
11:50here's what I just also realized.
11:52They only schmear half
11:54the
11:54bread
11:55with the mayonnaise.
11:56That way, that's the part that he then puts the meat on.
12:00And that way, when he rolls it up, the meat and the mayonnaise sort of incorporate together.
12:03But this side doesn't have a lot of mayonnaise or any on it.
12:06And that way, when it rolls up, it's not oozing or squeezing out.
12:09The mayonnaise is mixing in with the meat, not with the bread.
12:12Because otherwise, the bread becomes soggy.
12:14If there isn't enough mayonnaise, just dunk it in some more.
12:17It's delicious.
12:19Trust me.
12:20It's a Middle Eastern dish, but it tastes so Indian.
12:22It truly is that coming together of two cultures into one where it really is the best of both worlds.
12:29I mean, you get, you know, the slight exoticism of spices and the way of the preparation
12:33that is so unusual for the street food of India.
12:36But it is hugely popular as India's relationship with the Middle East has exploded.
12:42And now, entire styles of cuisine, these shawarma places have exploded in popularity over the last 10 years.
12:49And this is the perfect explanation for why.
12:51It's everything that I crave for from a flavor profile, but yet a little bit different,
12:56a little bit interesting, and addictive, highly addictive.
13:00It's a big restaurant by Indian indoor-outdoor eateries.
13:04But even though it's fairly large, there's a certain intimacy to it
13:07where the owner is sitting less than a stone's throw away from me.
13:11Yeah, this is sort of the dreamest restaurant I mean, if I retire, this is what I want to be doing.
13:16It's sitting there in one spot, not moving, watching the money coming in and the food going out.
13:21I mean, and everything within arm's reach, even the chaiwala.
13:25While we were waiting, he just kind of waved his hands around,
13:28and next thing you know, a cup of chai materialized out of nowhere.
13:30This is a dream come true for me.
13:33The grandfather that started this business spent a lot of time in the Middle East,
13:36and that's where he experienced the shawarma for the first time.
13:38And he wasn't sure if he bought this cuisine back to his homeland, whether it be accepted or not.
13:43So he decided to Indianize it.
13:44He added the chilies, the marinade, the masala.
13:49He's trying to meld both these worlds together, the Arab world and the Indian world.
13:53And India's been doing this for centuries.
13:56We assimilate, we adopt, we make it our own, we make it unique.
13:59And this place is unique.
14:01Restaurants like this are important because they show us that we can coexist,
14:05that we can enjoy each other's cultures, that we can truly be a global community.
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