Marketing Gimmicks

The Father of Chicago Shawarma Speaks Up

Shawarma at Naf Naf in Naperville: owes a debt to The Nile?
Shawarma at Naf Naf in Naperville: owes a debt to The Nile? Photo: ehfisher/Flickr

If you’ve ever eaten chicken shawarma in Chicago, Abed Moughrabi wants you to say thank you. The owner of Hyde Park’s The Nile claims that he introduced the chicken dish to the city — “I didn’t start shawarma in the world, but I started it here,” he told the Sun-Times. “I experimented with it and perfected it. Word spread… Now, there are, like, 200 or 300 places you can get chicken shawarma in the city.” Per our MenuPages Find-a-Food search, it’s on the menu at forty restaurants (plus four who spell it shwarma), though that doesn’t include stands, carts, and the like. [Sun-Times]

The Father of Chicago Shawarma Speaks Up