Fatima's

294-296 Cleveland St
Surry Hills

With the near-by Belvoir Street theatre sneezing upper middle-class affluenza over the surrounding gentrified streets, parking was a straight up nightmare. It gets to the point where you just have to mentally re-jig your week’s budget to absorb the $90 fine you’re gonna get, then spend the entire meal trying to be ok with it, but ultimately failing.

I was eating tonight in Fatima’s restaurant section which has yum food but I think is probably overpriced. It was $35 a head for a banquet that relied (astutely) on my inability to resist filling up on Lebanese bread and babaganouj. What I’d rather focus on though is the adjoining take-away wing – the jewel in Fatima’s crown. 

Her late-night take-away annex resembles a standard kebab shop just enough to engage the muscle memory of pissed stumblers-by, but then pulverises your concept of what a kebab shop can be. Freshly fried falafel and heavy skewers adorned with medallions of real lamb and chicken slow-cooking on the grill. Yes - SLOW-cooking, which you’d think might be a deal-breaker for impatient late night kebab-seekers but Fatima turns this negative into a lucrative triumph like so...

The narrowness of the shop means that while you sit writhing in pre-kebab agony, your face is pretty much pressed up against the display glass. What else can you do but survey the trays of glistening baklava, the beckoning lady fingers, the verdant vine leaves, the... cabbage rolls. You end up buying and devouring at least two of these while you wait, and as your contemplation of a third teeters on the brink of transaction your kebab arrives. And it is gooooooood. The felafel is crispy and delicious and all peripherals (tabouli, homous, babaganouj, chilli) taste decidedly homemade.

As an aside: I don’t eat meat but I can remember a time when I did, and I can remember the obstinate paste that a standard kebab paints across the roof of your mouth. And while I don’t want to promote meat-eating, I will say that actual discernible pieces of meat are probably healthier and tastier than a reconstituted cone of lard and lamb scrag. Just saying.

When it comes to late-night kebab purchase it’s a universally accepted fact that after 10pm, expectation of freshness, nutrition and general diseaselessness diminishes - a linear downward progression, reaching 0 at about 2.27am. At this point even Belvoir Street theatre-goers give a cheeky second look to pizza cheese on a bin rim.

But expect 2.30am diphtheria no longer!

Fatima’s offers essentially the same fare as any other kebab shop at essentially the same prices but it’s just better. Out of necessity I’ve learnt to love stale rubbery falafel, microwaved and pressed down with the back of a dirty tong. But sometimes when I’m walking out of some generic kebabery on the edge of town, sagging falafel roll in hand, I recall Fatima’s golden bounty and think to myself IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS!!! Then I inhale the kebab in 10 seconds flat.

X gives Fatima's a Tis'a (9)