Take Out Chronicles: Al-Salam Bakery & Restaurant

Al Salam Bakery & Restaurant

10141 34 Ave NW

Edmonton, AB T6E 5X9

(780) 944-0000

Quick snapper to tell you about one of my favorite places in the South: Al Salam Pita. You can choose your own adventure as soon as you enter Al Salam. Go right to explore their Middle Eastern grocery store, turn left to enter their full-service restaurant, or straight ahead is the kitchen and take out counter.

Mixed shawarma platter

I am partial to the mixed shawarma platter. After being sliced from the spit, the beef and chicken are grilled a little bit more before being topped with pickled turnips, pickles, and peppers. The fatoush salad is a loaded with dressing, which always leads to it being a bit limp by the time it gets home. The thick hummus packs a wallop of garlic, which, as a garlic-lover, is something I don't complain about.

Pita

The pitas are made in-house, daily, and toasted as the other food is being prepared so that it's slightly crisp on the outside. The pita itself expands like a pillow and has an inside soft like velvet.

I took me twenty years to try Lebanese food. I had no particular misgivings about it, but I was restricted by the limited options available in my small hometown. Shawarma was just another word I had no idea how to pronounce.  Pitas were a finicky vehicle for tuna salad when I ran out of bread which arrived in bags, flat and lifeless, from the grocery store. Since discovering Al Salam Pita, I've ordered enough shawarma that I feel my pronunciation is getting pretty solid, and, man, now I know what a pita should really be.