Shawarma Palace-New Location

As many of you know there are a few things that I take very seriously. Above all else, Shawarma. Sometimes this food gets a bad rap, cause there are allot of impostors out there who try to sell you their cheap ass stale, taste lacking version, so I have taken it upon myself to be knowledgeable in all things Shawarma, to educate the masses and pass on my knowledge first hand. So we ventured off to the New Shawarma Palace on Carling to see if it could live up to the home ofall things shawarma , Shawarma Palace on Rideau st.

The key to having good Shwarma is to be in a state of caloric deficit/extreme hunger/really messed up from a workout or better yet all of the above. Once this is achieved, you must then talk about Shawarma for a while so your mind starts to anticipate the fresh dollops of garlic sauce smucked on the side of your plate. So we had a five hour day at PEAK Centre and met the discussed prerequisites to find Shawarma Nirvana.

For some reason the Chicken platter is 1 dollar cheaper, not sure why. But the plate is slightly smaller and there is about 6-8% less food volume vs the OG Swarma Palace.
Garlic sauce is similiar but not quite the same and the after taste lingered a little longer for some reason. The chicken portion was good, but it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi of the OG SP.
The ambiance was pleasant, lots of pictures of Lebanon and Cedar trees that are the mainstay of good Lebanese restaurant abroad.

What a lot of people don't know , is that the most important feature of a good Shawarma platter is temperature. I have figured out the critical factor of all platters, which is not commonly known by most lay people. The rice, is they key. You say how can the rice be so important? Well it's actually the temperature of the rice. The rice must, I repeat must be very hot, as hot as possible and must be methodically laid as a type of warming bed for the rest of the platter. The rice is basically the foundation of the platter, it must be hot and saturated with unfamiliar spices like bay leaves, caraway seeds and a slight bit of Olive Oil and it must be moist. I believe it is the moisture of the rice that allows the heat to warm the chicken and provides the aroma to the platter. At some point you have to see steam come off of the rice, if yo don't I actually feel sorry for you cause your experience will not quite be the same.

The temperature of rice at the new location...was ok...not great, just ok. From my experience, you get the best, hottest rice and platter, when you look behind the Shwarma counter and the guys are working really hard and they are sweating up a storm, you know that it's the rice boiler and the flame from the Shish Taouk that are making them sweat, but they do this for you, so you can have tasty food. It's all about sacrifice.

So will I go back...well most likely as it is closer to Peak and will make for a quicker turn around after spinning ourselves into oblivion in Kanata. But nothing, I mean nothing comes close to SP on Rideau, this is where all good things Shawarma come from.

You may think this is funny, but I'm frigin serious man...Swarma Palace rules! If I ever have my own team, I'm gonna get Zach to sponsor us and write Powered by Shawarma on our asses and see how many people get on my wheel then!