Can’t find flavor at Halal Guys

The Halal Guys is New York street food that has taken a wrong turn. It started in 1990 as a pushcart catering to Islamic cabbies and became wildly popular with tourists at its midtown Manhattan corner. Now it is a fast growing fast-casual chain expanding to cities across the country. In the case of its South Florida outpost in Davie, which opened in January, the offerings are colorful but lack flavor.

The ballyhooed “white sauce” that blankets platters and pita sandwiches tasted like thin mayonnaise. The orange rice beneath shredded chicken looked exotic, its grains exuding a Cheeto-Trumpian glow from turmeric and saffron, but tasted bland. Falafel orbs — dark brown outside and vibrant green inside from parsley, mint and cilantro mixed with chickpeas — were good when hot and crispy, but turned mealy and meh after cooling. The hot sauce, a deep crimson paste, was all overpowering heat without subtlety.

“It’s 20 times hotter than jalapenos, 10 times hotter than habaneros,” says Shahmeer Alam, an attorney who owns the Davie franchise. “People love it.”

That sauce brought me back to the midnight shawarma shops of London that I would stumble into after a night of pubbing during a semester abroad long ago. Unfortunately, the gyros at The Halal Guys were nothing like the shawarmas, donner kebabs or gyros of my youth in New York or London. These didn’t have strips of flavorful lamb blended with beef on the vertical spit. The gyros at Halal Guys are all beef. Instead of being shaved directly onto pita bread, they are finished on a grill, chopped and placed in a steam tray along the front counter until they are piled into the foilwrapped sandwich. The end product was dry and crumbly, and more closely resembled chopped hamburger on pita instead of gyro.

Alam says the food cart ditched lamb around 17 years ago, after customers complained about the meat being too strong and gamey. “Some people just don’t like lamb,” Alam says. And some gyro lovers do. Too bad the chain doesn’t offer a blended option.

The Davie eatery is efficient and clean and geared toward quick takeout meals, with the food coming from a central supplier in New Jersey and preparation methods directed by corporate executives. It seems they would rather appeal to tastes in the

Midwest than adhere to traditions from the Middle East.

I also was disappointed by the chicken. Some of my favorite Mediterranean and Middle Eastern places offer kebabs or pitas with hefty cubes of fresh grilled chicken. Here there is thigh that is marinated for 12 hours, made in batches 120 pounds at a time. It is grilled to 80 percent doneness, chopped, and then finished on the grill when ordered. The result is thigh meat that is dry and loses the marinade flavor. My platter featured chicken that was practically shredded, like you’d find in some burritos.

Don’t even get me started on the sweet barbecue sauce offered with the sandwiches and platters. I tried it on my gyro, and it just doesn’t belong. Perhaps it will play in Kansas City.

Although I’m a New Yorker, I have never eaten at the original Halal Guys cart, started by three Egyptian immigrants across from the New York Hilton, at Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street. So I can’t say how the Davie branch compares to the original. The first brick-and-mortar Halal Guys opened in New York in 2014, the same year the founders struck a deal with the franchising firm that grew Five Guys burgers. There are now hundreds of Halal Guys in development, and Alam plans to open a Pembroke Pines location (at Pines Boulevard and Palm Avenue) in early 2018.

Because the restaurant is halal – adherent to Muslim dietary law with meat butchered a certain way – pork and alcohol are verboten. There’s a soda fountain, bottled soft drinks and water. Platters are served in tin containers, pita sandwiches are wrapped in foil. There are 14 seats inside and a few tables with umbrellas outside. The place seems to be popular with families and students from nearby colleges.

Alam says the Davie shop has been performing well. Diners certainly can’t beat the price, with everything under $10. When you walk into the narrow store, you’ll see a food counter with an army of smiling servers and a menu board that lists the handful of options. There is chicken, beef gyro or falafel, or a combination thereof, served in a pita sandwich ($6.99) or on a rice platter ($7.99 or $8.99). Toppings include iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, olives or jalapenos. There are three additional sides ($3.99): hummus, baba ghanoush and fries. There is one dessert, baklava ($2.49).

The baba ghanoush, eggplant with tahini, was too smoky and pureed for my liking. The hummus was creamy, airy and delicious. The baklava was flaky and excellent. At least I went out on a sweet note. Most offerings at the Halal Guys still need fine tuning.