Of shawarma and spices: A couple pairs a restaurant and market in Northeast Philadelphia

“If you tried our food in 2017,” Bishara Kuttab was saying last week, “you would not come back.”

He was joking, of course, but at the same time explaining how he has stepped up the cooking at Bishos, his casual Levantine restaurant in Northeast Philadelphia.

Almost everything is made from scratch daily: A worker comes in early to make saj, the crepe-thin unleavened flatbread, on a metal griddle called a saj. (Kuttab no longer buys frozen saj baked in Canada.) He has refined the marinades and spice blends for the chicken and beef/lamb shawarmas, which are built every day on vertical rotisseries. (Though the meats are juicy at noon, “they’re even better around 2 p.m.,” Kuttab said.) All sauces are made from scratch, such as shatta, a bold combination of chilies and roasted red pepper. “I go to some restaurants and ask for spicy sauce,” he said. “They give me Tabasco.”

The big seller on the menu is a shawarma double tray, portioned for two reasonably hungry people ($28): chicken and beef/lamb shawarma wraps, cut into pieces and served on a tray with fries, pickles, and toumiya sauce (a garlic sauce also known as toum). Lemonana, the lemon-mint slushie, is the beverage of choice. There’s always a special or two, such as lentil soup topped with sumac. A little more than half of the trade is takeout, but the spare room gives a great view of the kitchen action and there are backgammon sets, as well.

Kuttab calls his food “Levantine, Palestinian style. Everyone in America eats pizza, but there’s New York style, there’s Chicago style, and so on. My food is mostly Palestinian style. I did live in Jordan for a while, so there’s a little bit of Jordan-Syrian influence, especially with the toumiya. It’s not very common in Palestinian shawarma, but it’s very common in Syrian shawarma.”

Born in Jerusalem to Palestinian parents, Kuttab, 35, spent his summers in Elkins Park and Cheltenham, where his father, an American citizen, has family. He said he had always been interested in the food business, but never had any formal culinary training. “My uncles had restaurants in Bethlehem and Jerusalem,” Kuttab said. “I didn’t really learn anything from them, but just the fact that they had restaurants, I always knew that I might have it in me, too.”

In 2017, he opened Bishos in Roosevelt Mall; it closed during the pandemic. A silver lining is that this is where he met his wife, Zohra Saibi, who worked for him. They now have a son, Daoud, born in April 2023.

In 2022, the couple relocated Bishos to a storefront in Fox Chase, about 10 minutes from the mall. Later that year, Saibi sensed an opportunity to showcase products from her Algerian ancestry. The couple took over a large vacant space two doors away and opened Le Souk, a bright market stocked with North African and Arab sweets, nuts, spices, and gifts. There’s also a counter serving bubble waffles, sweet crepes, and Turkish coffee, whose beans they roast in-house.

Bishos’ customer base, like the Northeast’s population, is a mix — “I would say half-American, half-international,” Kuttab said. “Not just Arab or Middle Eastern. We get a lot of Eastern Europeans and central Asian people, like Uzbek, Turkish, and Armenian. A lot of them say it reminds them of where they come from. A lot of places here Americanize the food. We try to keep it authentic and that registers with people.”

Kuttab said he also has a lot of Jewish and Israeli customers. “We’re not political, and we don’t get involved,” he said. “I actually had an Israeli customer come in and say, ‘Am I welcome here?’ I said, ‘Of course. Why would you even ask? You’re always welcome.’”