The Mouth heads west for the mother of all kebabs, served by the king of kebabs

The Mouth forsakes Insta-worthy French bistros for a taste of Turkish in Sydney’s west. He gets lost in the magic of the Iskender. And again near the airport on the way home.

New Star Kebabs at 15 Auburn Rd, Auburn. Picture: Facebook

No poncy Insta-worthy French bistro this week, no North Shore kids who went to Florence this one time and decided to do their take on a “trattoria”.

Instead, we are heading west.

But first let this column make a confession.

Last week we complained about the general fecklessness of youth and their lack of life skills at things like mixing martinis.

Well, this column’s Number One Son has still not mastered that skill either, making us feel like a bit of a failure in the fatherhood stakes, because we’ve never actually tried to teach him.

Rob Shehadie taste testing the kebabs at New Star Kebabs. Picture: Jonathan Ng

However he is otherwise a keen lover of all things food, and comes up with some damn good ideas.

Like when he said on a recent evening, “We really should go get an Iskender sometime.”

Ah, the Iskender.

Rob Shehadie, right, with Atilla Tok, owner of New Star Kebabs in Auburn and the western Sydney kebab shop king. Open since 2000, Atilla’s store goes through one ton of meat a week and is the busiest kebab shop in NSW. Picture: Jonathan Ng

A legendary Turkish dish, the mother of all kebabs, the OG “halal snack pack” … this was sheer genius on the part of the lad.

The idea is basically that you take pita and shave meat of some description over the top and add yoghurt and a spicy tomato sauce and if you’re really being authentic you drizzle boiling butter over the whole damn thing.

And thus we found ourselves snaking our way under the city via WestConnex – a piece of urban engineering that’s as close to teleportation as we will see in our lifetime – at the New Star Kebab House.

What a scene: Meats of all varieties being grilled over coals and spun on doner spits.

Staff member Taha Elsayed making a kebab at New Star Kebabs. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Now, the danger with this sort of expedition is that one can feel a bit out of place, like oldies who go on outer suburban food tours and use the word “gorgeous” about the locals and have faded “I Give a Gonski” stickers on their Subarus.

Of course, this is nonsense.

We knew what we were there for, the staff understood this immediately, we got a table in no time despite a crush of people, and we were away.

So, how was the kebab?

Honestly, not as great as the ones we’ve had in Turkey, but we weren’t in Turkey.

However everything – the dips, the bread, the Iskender plates themselves, the fact they even sold the Turkish yoghurt drink known as ayran – was far more than the sum of its parts.

And, best bit, it all came to something like $54 for two, and made a list of local Chinese duck houses and Arab eateries we want to hit next time.

If we didn’t get lost in the tunnels on the way home making seventeen loops of the city before getting spit out by the airport, it would have been a perfect father son expedition.

— New Star Kebab, 15 Auburn Rd, Auburn.

— The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.