Granville might be known as the original home of El Jannah chicken but down the road you’ll also find Hawa, slick with red and black uniformed staff and the motto “in taste we trust”. There’s a huge dining area here, with stacks of benches and booths inside plus chairs and tables on the street.
You can smell it as soon you hit the main street of Granville. That’s the scent of chicken skin charring to a smoky crisp as fat drips and sizzles onto glowing charcoal below. Endless racks of flattened chooks spin around and around on a spit. This is barbecue chicken, Lebanese-style. Garlic sauce is mandatory.
The crowd is a happy mix of families, teenagers and blokes. No one bats an eyelid at the soccer players hoeing into an entire chicken each. Construction work down the back indicates there’ll be a kids play area opening soon.
A whole chook will set you back $20, but once you factor in the free sides, it easily translates to a family-sized meal. You’ll score rounds of soft Lebanese bread, salty pickled cucumber, lurid pink pickled turnips and thick and fluffy toum (that addictive Lebangarlic sauce). Mix, pick and graze in any order you please. Dunk the chicken in garlic sauce. Don’t forget to order chips. Dip those in the garlic sauce as well. Bliss. And if you’re skint, take-away chicken is half the price.
Charcoal chicken might rule the roost here but you can also dig into skewers of kefta spiced lamb mince, shish lamb skewers and shish tawok marinated chicken, jammed onto giant swords and cooked over a flaming grill.
Vegetarians don’t miss out on all the fun either. The vege platter is a cracker, piled high with hoummus, baba ghanouj, dolmades, deep-fried cauliflower, deep-fried eggplant, tabouleh and crunchalicious garlicky falafel balls. Everybody wins.
