Passover is finally over!  After eight days of being denied some of my favorites, I was ready to INDULDGE heavily in those heretofore forbidden foods.  That’s right, during the previous week plus I ate No bread, No rice, No beans, and even SESAME SEEDS were verboten.  (If you grew up in the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, this MIGHT make sense to you.  If not, don’t sweat it, just take it on faith.  This ain’t the place to what you can and cannot eat during Passover.)

So, what better way to get reacquainted with some of my forgotten favorites than combining ALL OF THEM in one meal?  Enter:  OLD JERUSALEM, the “Mediterranean joint” on Mission between 25th and 26th.

Man, I LOVE this place.  I haven’t eaten EVERYTHING on the menu, but everything that I have eaten has ALWAYS been good.  I feel like, if someone can spout off a negative stereotype about people from a certain region, then let me make a POSITIVE stereotypical statement:  folks from the middle east take PRIDE in the food they serve and seem to LOVE pleasing their customers with good food.  I’ve never been to a Middle Eastern / Mediterranean restaurant where I felt like the owners and the cooks were “just winging it” or going through the motions.  (Unlike CERTAIN cultures in this city that I could name.  Hmmm.)  Maybe their business model sucked, maybe they had no idea about customer service or how a meal is supposed to flow (hello, Palmyra on Haight Street!)  but you knew that, at the very least, the food was their top priority.  You could feel good about what you were eating because they wanted you to love it.  Well, O.J. is no exception.

This is the kind of place where the owner pulls up a chair and starts talking with his regulars, where families come with their kids to sit and eat.  Very low key, very comfortable and homey.

I ordered the Chicken Shawarma plate.  I asked for half rice / half hummus.  No problem.  I think it’s worth it to get the entrees here, as opposed to simply ordering the sandwiches, because all the entrees come with a lot of extra sides.  So, not only do you get rice, hummus, and the Chicken Shawarma, you also get four pitas, a plate of olives and pickled turnips, a little side dish of “bakdounsia” which I believe is a variation on Tahini, and a spicy chili dip.  Personally, the chili dip wasn’t working for me.  It had raw onions, which gave it a nice crunch, and it was a decent combo of tomato and spicy, but I really hate raw onions, I gotta tell you.

The rice was fluffy and yellow.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m a sucker for yellow rice / arroz amarillo.  Maybe it’s chicken stock that does it, maybe it’s just Yellow Dye #12, but one way or another, I likes it!  I really feel like you can judge a place by the simplest items on their menu, their fries, their rice.  If they can make the rice stand out from the ordinary, chances are they’re going to nail the more complicated dishes as well.

The hummus was just the way I like it – all the ingredients (garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon, garlic, olive oil) blended together in a nice harmony, with no one ingredient overpowering the mix.

And the chicken?  FLUFFY.  I don’t know how else to describe it!  Little chunks of fluffy white meat, deliciously hinting at cumin and sumac.  Wrap it up in some warm pita with a layer of hummus and a hint of hot sauce – Heaven!

I’m a pig, so I ate the whole thing, which came to $18 and change including tax and tip.  But, honestly, if I was watching my weight, or if I was two people weighing under 115 pounds each, this easily could’ve been split into two normal size meals instead of one JI-GUNDA meal.

You should explore their menu, because from what I can tell, it’s all good.  They even have a dish that combines Lamb with eggs, which I’ve never seen anywhere before but I LOVED!

Summary: really good food at great value for the price, served up by people who WANT you to love it.

Old Jerusalem

2976 Mission St

San Francisco, CA 94110

b/t 26th St & 25th St in Mission