London-Style Kebab Joint(s) in Chicago?

Are there any? If so, are any worth going to? Recently spent a week in London, which re-kindled my taste for good, simple kebab places (akin to Chicago burrito restaurants). In case you know London, I made a couple of trips to Crystal Palace on Holloway Road in North London (about a mile north of where the new Arsenal stadium (very very cool) is.

For those of us that are not very familiar with London, can you describe what makes a kebab-joint "London-style" ?

Best,
Michael

SonOfND wrote:Are there any? If so, are any worth going to? Recently spent a week in London, which re-kindled my taste for good, simple kebab places (akin to Chicago burrito restaurants). In case you know London, I made a couple of trips to Crystal Palace on Holloway Road in North London (about a mile north of where the new Arsenal stadium (very very cool) is.

I'm in the group of "not very familiar with London" but there is Original Kababish of London

The reader profiled this restaurant in the food section in 2003, but the story is only available in their archives and costs $1.95 to read.

We went a couple of times more than a year ago. Both times we had pretty good food but really lousy service and generally bad ambiance. The second time we went, another table of customers stormed out because their service was so bad, and there were lots of flies pestering us. I almost wonder if the place changed hands because the RRR writeup (linked above) and the profile led me to expect a slightly more polished place.

There are lots of other kabab places, but I'm not qualified to recommend them let alone compare them to London restaurants.

Note that there's another unrelated Kababish on Orleans which has been well reviewed here.

Original Kababish of London
2437 W. Devon
773-973-0225

Döner kebab?

like....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%B6ner ... of_Ireland

Look around. There are quite literally hundreds of posts here on Desi-Style or maybe "London-Style" kebab palaces. I do assume you refer more to the Pakistani/Indian style than "Middle-Eastern" or Turkish, given London's demo. But maybe not, since there seems to be a lot of doner type places also.

I wrote some stuff about the Original Kababish of London, a self-consciously Londoner Desi kebab place long ago. I like the keema nan, but there are better on the street.

For starters, you might search for the South Asian ilk: Khan, Kababish, Baba's, Hyderabad; for the more Middle-Eastern: Salam, Noon-O-Kebab, Steve's, Sahar. See also, posts re tacos al pastor. A South Asian/Arab hybrid is Kebab Corner, just outside the Loop. In Chicago, these places tend to be called "cabbie joints," for better or worse. Not nearly as Anglicized (ha) as what's in Lon.

The London kebab places even have legal counsel, apparently.

Jeff,

I like that picture a lot, more precisely, the touch of humility expressed on the sign...

On the doner kebabs of England topic, I call attention to this report of mine about a place in Oxford:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=44947#44947

On one of the ‘free’ days before the Symposium, having had no breakfast and wishing to spend the better part of the afternoon in the Ashmolean, I decided to do ‘brunch’. On the somewhat scruffier westside of town, on Gloucester Green (near the train station), I came across a Pakistani run fast-food joint, "Kebab Kid," and decided to give it a go. I ordered a “döner kebab on naan” (more expensive than on pitta) with garlic sauce. This is what I got:


It was, in fact, a rather massive amount of food and pretty good in all the bad ways fast food can simultaneously be both good and bad. The garlic sauce turned out to be mayo-based and I have limited tolerance for mayo, but I was able to push most of it aside and obtain a better ratio of stuff to sauce. The naan was an excellent vehicle for this pile of meat and salad and my only complaint (aside from the excess of mayo-based garlic sauce) was that more of the spicy pickled peppers would have been good to have. At £3.95, this was not all that cheap a meal, given what it was, but it was pretty good, in a fast-food sort of way.

I'll be back in Oxford soon and will perhaps try another such place... there are, I think, a couple of others on Gloucester Green and nearby streets.

Antonius

The type of place that serves "doner" or "donner" kebabs (among other things).

"But maybe not, since there seems to be a lot of doner type places also."


Actually, I think the middle-easter or "doner" type is what I am thinking of.

funny, I've always thought of doner kabob as a mitteleuropascien kinda thang(immigration patterns n such---one of the most fantastic sandwiches I've eaten was a torta cum gyro bought at a dingy kabob stand frequented by hoods next to a curiously popular men's room in Mainz)...did not know they were big in Britain

JeffB - was that photo taken in Clapham Junction?

I used to walk by that kebab shop every day between the train station and my apartment and always laughed at the sign. Although maybe there are other locations in London with the same slogan?

Can't vouch as to whether it was "probably" the best kebab, but their chips were quite good after nights out!