San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Truck delivers solid halal, Mediterranean
Owned and run by Syrian refugees
On my way to Albania, I wound up in Syria.
That’s the way of the food truck game. You start out looking for one truck. It’s gone. You drive until you find another. That’s how I found King of Shawarma and Kabab, a red trailer parked next to a Valero station on Wurzbach Road by the Medical Center.
And that’s how I met Khedro and Ahmed Banna, two brothers from Syria who started the truck four years ago with their father, Mohamad Banna. They left their native Syria after Mohamad Banna was shot in a helicopter attack at his restaurant there. After a few years sheltering in Turkey, the family came to the United States with the help of a United Nations representative.
Now they work 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the window of their trailer, making a range of halal-certified Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food, from shawarma and gyros to hummus and kebabs. When they’re not working, Ahmed Banna’s a senior at Marshall High School. Khedro Banna’s studying to be a dentist.
The work part’s easy, Ahmed Banna said, a relief after everything his family’s been through. He conveyed their sentiments in a text: “We are very grateful for being here. We can’t thank the Americans enough for giving us such an opportunity. Peace and God bless America.”
Best dish: It’s no surprise that the best thing I ate at King of
Shawarma is also the trailer’s best seller. It’s a gyro wrap filled with thin slices of spit-roasted lamb, onion, parsley, lettuce, tomato and tzatziki sauce, all of it amplified by the red pepper puree called muhammara.
It’s a great value at $5.99. Add crisp, hot crinkle-cut fries for
$1.99.
Other dishes: You can’t be the King of Shawarma and Kabab without being good at both. The Bannas came through with a plate of beef shawarma cut in thin, juicy ribbons, with more herb than a Colorado duffel bag. For $11.99, the plate included a
bed of yellow rice, hummus, pita and a Mediterranean salad of chopped cucumber and tomatoes.
Kebabs were represented by a mixed plate with kebab sticks with ground beef and chicken, densely packed and lightly spiced ($10.99 with rice, salad, pita and
hummus).
The trailer’s chicken shawarma wrap ($4.99) behaved as much like a burrito as a Mediterranean wrap, with chicken and garlic sauce swaddled tightly in a pita. It was the ugly duckling of the dinner parade but nonetheless satisfying.
The broader story of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food is written in its side dishes, and the best here came straight from the Syrian pantry: a creamy spread of muhammara that spreads like hummus but tastes like a rich Sicilian marinara ($2.99).
A Greek salad was much more elegant than I’d expect from an operation on wheels, with a full spread of feta, olives, cucumbers and tomatoes with olive oil and cool, crisp lettuce ($2.99). The included dolma delivered the familiar, satisfying comfort that comes from herbed rice deftly wrapped in grape leaves with olive oil.
I’ll have to come another time for falafel and baba ganoush. Because while big dreams and a strong work ethic define foodtruck life, so does supply and demand.