Sunday, January 07, 2007

Gonna Take You for a Real Good Meal**

If you live in LA, (I hope) this isn't a newsflash: Zankou Chicken rocks. But did you know that the original Zankou was opened in Lebanon in 1964? Or that one of the original owners shot and killed his sister, mom and then himself in 2003? Whoa.

Anyway, murders aside, Zankou's chicken chawerma plate sits high on the list of Erin's LA favorites. You gotta get the plate, because it's about the whole package--the warm pitas, the rich, creamy hummus, the tahini (sesame) sauce, and of course the garlic paste. For merely 50 cents, you can get an extra garlic paste to take with ya--keep it in your fridge and you can pleasantly transform boring weeknight meals into fabulousness.

My favorite location is the original--corner of Sunset and Normandie. Some on the review site Yelp have labeled this the "ghetto"--um, no. The only risk you'll run here is that of potent garlic breath. Have fun!

Zankou Chicken
5065 W Sunset Blvd
corner of Normandie and Sunset
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Click here for info on other locations

**Check out Beck's song Debra for some Zankou Chicken love

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

**drool**

Okay, my sesame tofu doesn't sound so delicious anymore ... I want garlic sauce!

Anonymous said...

Ew, scary. "I'll have the sister kebab?"
(Nah, ya knucklehead, I'm just teasing.)

Anonymous said...

Someone needs to reverse engineer that garlic sauce and post the recipe to the world.

- Chubbypanda

Erin S. said...

chubbypanda, I know!! I think it's gotta be some kind of butter and garlic paste, but I'm not sure. So creamy and so white!!

cookiecrumb--I know, totally wacko. But the restaurant (it's a small chain) soldiers on?!?!

Anonymous said...

i love that garlic sauce. here's a link to some recipes people developed to imitate the zankou sauce. i keep meaning to try them myself.
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/60530

Anonymous said...

I want some of that now!
It's amazing what a little drama can do to drum up business, isn't it? Wow! What a story. I wonder why he killed them? Maybe they threatened to release a secret garlic sauce recipe.

Anonymous said...

This item was just listed in the current issue of Saveur as part of the Annual Saveur 100 for 2006. After having read this post this morning, I then read the article and said to myself "I know someone who would agree with this one!"