São Paulo – A passionate fan of kebabs, shawarmas and falafel, typical Middle Eastern dishes, Brazilian journalist Claudio Schapochnik, aka “Schapo”, 44 years old, shares his dining experiences in Brazil and the world on the blog Kebap e Falafel do Schapo: Paixões gastronômicas em variados ângulos ("Schapo’s Kebap and Falafel: Dining passions at varied angles" in a free translation). “I am crazy about these dishes, and I wanted to discuss the things I saw and tasted and to write reviews,” he told ANBA.
Schapo created the blog in 2009 and writes posts regularly. A total of 81 posts were published since the launch of the blog. The journalist posts his impressions on restaurants, snack bars, kiosks and food carts which offer the delicacies, comments on the quality and quantity of the ingredients, spices, sauce and prices, besides showing the characters behind the counters. All posts have lots of pictures.
His passion for the dishes started during a trip to Germany in 1997, when one of his friends took him to have a kebab in Dresden. The country had a large Turkish influx in the post-war period and the dish became very popular there.
The Turkish kebab is made with beef or poultry on a vertical rotisserie, roasted and then sliced when it is ready to be served. It can be served on a plate or eaten with bread, with servings of vegetables. The sandwich version is known in the Arab world as shawarma. Spits with diced meat are also called kebabs by Arabs.
“In Brazil we do not have the number of kebab restaurants they do in Europe, Middle East and the United States,” said Schapo. Brazil has a popular version of the dish known as churrasco grego (literally, Greek barbecue), very common in downtown São Paulo snack bars, but the food has questionable quality.
Lately, however, good restaurants started offering the snack with top quality ingredients. “Brazilians travel to the Middle East, Europe and the USA a lot, and when they come back they say: ‘I will have [kebab and falafel] here too,” he said.
But he points out the differences: “In Europe [kebab] is an authentic fast-food dish, to be eaten standing up, but in Brazil the dish is also offered at restaurants, at more sophisticated places,” the journalist explained.
Sophistication, however, is not a requirement and there are simpler establishments serving great options. These places are common, for example, in the city of Foz do Iguaçu in Paraná, which has a large Arab community. They are also common in São Paulo.
The blogger, however, says the best kebabs he has ever had were in Germany and Turkey. In Turkey, according to him, more traditional recipes are made, without innovations such as the sauces and spices which are popular in Europe. Schapo has already tasted the snack in a wide variety of locations, such as Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. There, for the first time, he tasted the dish made on the vertical rotisserie over embers, rather than on electrical or gas grills. “It is much tastier,” he says.
As regards falafel, Schapo says he actually ate the best ones in Brazil. Just like kebabs, the fried balls, which can be made of fava beans or chickpeas depending on the region, are served on a plate or on bread.
Kebab and falafel are popular dishes in much of the Middle East and North Africa, in Arab and non-Arab countries alike. There, besides Turkey, the blogger has already tried the delicacy in Jordan, Israel and Palestine. “It is a good, cheap and satisfying food,” the specialist says.
Service:
Kebap e Falafel do Schapo: Paixões gastronômicas em variados ângulos
http://kebapfalafelschapo.wordpress.com/
To contact the author, please write to schapo18@uol.com.br
*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça
