Chef Mat Lindsay wakes up every morning to bake cookies. He doesn’t own a bakery, and the cookies won’t be found on the menu at his restaurant, Ester, in Chippendale, or his Surry Hills wine bar, Poly. They’re for his kebab shop, Shwarmama.
The glossy concrete, marble and steel-clad hole-in-the-wall is tucked away on leafy Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills. Lindsay has joined forces with Russell Beard of nearby Paramount House Hotel, Paramount Coffee Project and Reuben Hills fame for the project, and together they make a winning team. The food is fast and fresh, the site considered, the vibe buzzing, and the branding? Pure fire.
Manning the till at the all-day eatery are young staff decked out in Shwarmama merch (think fire-engine red neckerchiefs and backwards hats).
“What’s good?” we ask.
“Literally everything,” says our server. And it’s not a lie.
Go with a gang, and start with the hummus. A well of the silky dip, whipped like cream with tahini, holds juicy whole chickpeas, harissa and citrusy parsley oil. The shawarma is chicken, heavily spiced, and shaved to order from a gas-powered vertical spit. Choose to have it loaded into that crisp-edged laffa, or over chips in the Not Halal Snack Pack. In both guises the juicy meat plays support-act to garlic sauce, harissa, tahini, hummus, onions and hot-pink crunchy pickles, but it’s in the NHSP that you can taste the spices at their best. The chips, too, skin-on and fried extra crisp, somehow hold their crunch under a hot mess of shawarma meat and a Snakes and Ladders game of sauce.
Next to shawarma, there’s sabich – a chewy pull of fried eggplant, sliced boiled egg, onions and red cabbage in a fluffy pita pocket– or super herby, smashed falafel, fried to order and teamed with cucumber, cabbage, more pickles, onions and fiery fefferoni peppers. Shwarmama plays it safe with the garlic (we’re calling it: this is the perfect kebab shop for a date), so hit up the extra sauce on the counter.
Everything is under $16, and it almost certainly comes with tahini, hummus and harissa. The real star, however, is the green mango sauce, or amba, on the sabich. It tastes of pure lime pickle blitzed to sweet oblivion, and it’s best added to everything. Then add some more.
Bar one bench outside, there are no seats, so be ready to hit the park or keep your elbows firmly tucked. Diners squeeze in at a wrap-around white marble bar in the window for syrupy and tart pomegranate sodas and savoury Wildflower beer – both options lending great acid and tang where it’s needed. There’s also Australian fiano and nebbiolo, and self-serve coffee from Reuben Hills. A record player spins the likes of Solange and Erykah Badu, but we reckon that’s prime real estate for extra garlic sauce and, fingers crossed, some lemons.
For now, Mama’s got you with that cookie (step aside, Alison Roman). Like pizza the next day, the sesame showered, salt-flecked disc of chocolate and tahini holds up for tomorrow’s 3pm pick-me-up or dessert later on. Lindsay might not have a bakery yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time.