Middle Eastern food in Toronto: shawarma, kebab, mezze and where to go

How to tell shawarma from kebab, Lebanese from Persian, and where to eat Middle Eastern food across Toronto. Every place with its own phone number.

Middle Eastern is not one kitchen, and the fastest way to eat badly is to treat it as one. A Lebanese shawarma counter, a Persian kebab house and a Syrian home kitchen are three different meals, and Toronto has all of them, spread across every borough rather than gathered on one strip.

Here is how to tell them apart and order well.

Know what you are ordering

• Shawarma is meat stacked on a vertical spit, shaved off as it roasts, and rolled in a wrap with garlic sauce, pickles and sometimes fries. It is fast food done properly, and the tell of a good one is turnover: a busy spit is a fresh spit.
• Toum is the garlic sauce, whipped garlic and oil, fierce and white. A place that makes its own is a place that cares. Ask for extra.
• Kebab is grilled meat on a skewer, and it is the centre of a Persian meal, served with saffron rice and grilled tomato. Koobideh is minced, joojeh is chicken. This is a sit-down dinner, not a wrap.
• Mezze is the small-plate spread: hummus, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, fattoush, falafel, stuffed vine leaves. Order a table of it with warm bread and you have eaten well without a main.
• The bread matters. Fresh, warm, and ideally baked in house. Cold supermarket pita is a warning about everything else.

Downtown and the west end

North York

Scarborough

Before you go

Ring first for a sit-down kebab dinner, especially at the weekend, and check whether a place is halal if that matters to you, because many are but not all say so on the sign. The number on each page is the restaurant's own.

Written by See The Six · kept current from the directory, last checked 2026-08-24