Charc Shawarma

Greetings friends and readers of hamiltonshawarma.com! It’s been a bit. This year, I’ve travelled and tried the shawarmas of Waterloo (good), Indianapolis (bad), and Peterborough (ugly), but they’d all be disqualified on this site. Thanks to the joy of living indoors in 2024, I’ve eaten out less. Most of my stops have been to favourites: Phoenicia Food Express, Lulu’s Shawarma, Timmy’s Tanür, and Speedy Subs¹. And my review of Crown Shawarma didn’t even get published before they closed. (Great people, shawarma: less so.) But as the year wraps up, and I’ve returned from my workplace in Flamborough back to the central Mountain, it’s time to get back on the horse.

Charc Shawarma cooks their chicken over charcoal. That’s the main hook, and it’s a good one. The chicken is roasted horizontally over a bed of coals, rather than vertically, which is typical for shawarma. I recall an anecdote of someone in Turkey describing you could tell the good kebab from the bad by whether the meat was vertical or horizontal. I can’t remember which the good one was. This does seem harder to slice from, though it would be much better for absorbing the smoke.

I approached the nice gentlewoman working the store and placed my order. You have to choose between charcoal and non-charcoal chicken, which I found a little odd. I was invited to choose my toppings from a large variety of things (one appeared to be coleslaw?), including cucumber, which is always nice on shawarma in my eyes. The gentleman running the restaurant quickly noticed I had been overcharged and promptly gave me some cash back for my trouble, a surprisingly easy thing to do in the current tax holiday. Before long, my order was ready and walked out to a table for me.

This is a very good sandwich! The bread is golden and just starting to get fried from the grill. The toppings are quite tasty, the sauces are nice but don’t stand out as exceptional. And maybe I should have asked for a bit less sauce, because it masks the star of the show: the chicken. The chicken with its smoky charcoal flavour is sublime, incredibly delicious. Different from most shawarma you’ll find, and it really pays off in a good way.

This is a good chicken shawarma sandwich! And a good sandwich tells me there are other good things here. I will definitely return and try their other offerings with smoky charcoal flavour. But I will also strive to continue our journey, dear reader, of trying new shawarmas in this town. Happy new year everyone!² 8/10

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2. 2024 Shawarma of the Year Award will be announced soon. If you’re willing to offer free shawarma for consideration, email uncledoug@hamiltonshawarma.com ↩︎