What enthusiasm.
Shawarma Alaraz (Photo: David Rosenthal)
In most cases, when you try a new place it happens "on the road".
If a person tells you "don't ask what hamburger I ate at the Golani junction", you know that he didn't go there just because he felt like it.
He probably had another business in the area.
How many times do you find yourself traveling for the food and nothing else?
Inviting and polished.
Shawarma Alaraz (Photo: David Rosenthal)
I heard about Shawarma Alaraz in Kfar Kasem from several sources.
The main recommender was Or, a member of the media group where I work, who lives in Rosh Ha'Ain and goes there often.
It always came down to "yeah, yeah, I'll visit there", the food review invitation version of "sure, we'll sit down for a beer sometime", the same phrase you say to people you know you'll go out of your way not to meet.
But one day, especially from heaven, the thought "maybe after all" occurred to me.
And maybe not, actually?
What's the point in going to Lafar Qasim now?
It's somewhere after nowhere.
This is far.
When Einstein talked about the relativity of time, he demonstrated: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it will seem like an hour. Sit next to a beautiful woman for an hour and it will seem like a minute."
Kfar Qasim looked like the oven to me, but is it really far?
33 minutes estimated by Waze.
A routine trip from Givatayim to Jaffa takes me longer, but this direction of Route 5 is less familiar to me, so it theoretically feels particularly long.
Practical - I arrived after 32 minutes at lunch time (in the morning or evening it would really take much longer).
Parking was plentiful, and I was already relieved.
A pleasant January sun was shining in the sky and the "Alarz" sign - to no avail, even though it was apparently requested - was flying from above.
I went inside and was first impressed by the welcome that the place itself, not the people, gave me - clean, spacious, inviting.
There is no second chance for a first impression, and Alárez definitely bought me before the first bite.
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Why choose if you can have both? (Photo: David Rosenthal)
Two fat wheels of lamb and turkey beckoned to me.
I went to the register expecting to go through the painful first step of "what are you ordering", but no one came for several minutes.
Four people work there, but the division of labor and efficiency are not in the sky.
Not bad, it gave me time to deliberate between the fateful questions: a plate?
Pita?
Maybe to bake?
And what kind of meat?
I thought about the compromise that is made quite a lot in places like this - shawarma mix, we will take half and half and everything will work out, but there is a trap here.
If it's your first time, the mixed flavors don't allow for a real opinion.
If the lamb is good and the turkey less or vice versa you will have a hard time knowing it.
If you're already familiar with shawarma, go for it, but it's too early to mix.
Why choose one type of meat if you can have two?
I went for a lamb pita (NIS 38) and half a portion of turkey (NIS 22).
And yes, there is also a very generous free salad bar.
And here it comes separately - the lamb dish (Photo: David Rosenthal)
Half the portion of the turkey (photo: David Rosenthal)
The smiling guy at the counter put a mysterious spice in my pita, blew me out of proportion with a plate of chips on the side, and put the same spice on it too.
There is cumin here, I recognized, but what else?
Well, we'll bother ourselves with that later.
Now it's time to eat.
Usually, a description of a shawarma dish begins with meat and not pita, but it was so dreamy that it warranted its own compliments.
This is not a pita that you meet every day, at least not in the places where I eat.
It is more reminiscent of a Druze pita in its freshness and flexibility, and nothing less than fantastic.
Inside it, yes yes, sits what I can cautiously determine as the best warma I've tasted in the central region.
I'm careful to say that in Israel, because the Haifa bar is not easy to cross, but believe me there were better ones.
It's easy to get excited about shawarma, and I've had quite a few of them in the past.
I have never had such a combination of pita and meat.
I asked the guys what was in the mystery spice.
I threw out the word "cumin" and they smiled.
"It's a spice we make here," said one of them, "yes, it also has cumin in it," he winked.
said and was silent.
Cumon too
, and that's it, you can guess the rest yourself, I'm not in a hurry to release this state secret.
Everything around it has a thorn and this is the place to point out that despite the generosity of the place in everything around it, the pita itself is very small, to say the least.
I felt that I made the right choice with a portion and a half, because I'm not sure I would have been full if I had settled for just the lamb.
On the other hand, keep in mind that my bill came out to NIS 60.
I know places that take this amount per lapa and with much less extras and generosity.
So how did it come out?
Shawarma Alaraz is nothing less than the canals.
It's a bit surprising that compared to a well-known place that has been around for a good few years, it hasn't gained media attention, but apparently I'm not the only one who's too lazy to drive half an hour east.
In the KMA (quantity-price-quality) index, I never reached the maximum score of 10. This time I considered it seriously, but two factors interfered here: one is the long wait at the beginning, which took half a point off, and the other is the amount of meat and the size of the pita. The extras around, the generosity and the cleanliness balanced it out A significant part of the minus. 9 is the score I give, and I implore you too: give gas and just get to Kfar Qasim. You are guaranteed an hour that will seem like a minute.
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