The Yorkshire village café with the best kebab outside the Middle East

Ever since my first shawarma in Jerusalem’s Old City I’ve been looking for a kebab that comes close.

For the uninitiated, shawarma is a bit like döner but with much better meat and more care all round. Slices of marinaded chicken or lamb are grilled on a vertical spit and served in a fluffy flatbread. Add crunchy salad, salty pickles and condiments such as hummus, harissa, yoghurt sauce, zhoug (a spicy coriander paste) and amba (a mango sauce) and you have a little slice of heaven.

My subsequent shawarma experiences have been underwhelming with dry, insipid meats and indifferent sauces. There were two notable exceptions – next door to each other on Bradford’s Manningham Lane. Nusret Shawarma and Istanbul Shawarma were right up there, the best I’ve tasted outside the Holy Land...until now.

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I’ve found a place in an unlikely part of God’s Own Country that serves an even better shawarma. And it’s not in multiethnic Bradford, Leeds or even West Yorkshire.

In a listed 18th-century cottage in the corner of Masham’s picture-perfect market square is Johnny Baghdad’s Cafe of the Square. ‘Johnny’ is in fact, owner Colin Blair. He made the name up while selling middle-eastern food from his catering truck at a festival. Some girls were trying to get free food and a tipsy Colin assumed the moniker as banter – but the name stuck.

Inside Johnny Baghdad’s it’s quirky and cosy. The low-ceiling, low lights and closely packed tables encourage conversation between strangers. Most of the diners are on holiday so the vibe is jovial.

The main menu at Johnny Baghdad’s looks like that of any cafe menu in a touristy rural. There’s the usual hot and cold sandwiches, soup, full English breakfast etc. But the specials board is where you want to look. Colin has been cooking and selling middle-eastern food for 25 years and the board (at least today) reflects that.

One of the specials is chicken shawarma with hot sauce, hummus and salad. That’s a no-brainer for me but if you’re fed up with fowl there’s a lamb kofta version. There’s a veggie one too that’s half-tempting even for dedicated omnivores like me.

The service is friendly and fast and within 10 minutes it’s shawarma o’ clock. A side salad is usually there to pad out a meal. It covers the remaining white space on a plate. If you want to kid yourself, you can say it mitigates the damage done by the fatty, oily meat and chips it accompanies. Nobody gets excited about a side salad.

Well, this one is exciting. It’s colourful, crunchy, tangy, sweet and vinegary. Wow. Side salads have the power to surprise after all.

Side salad consumed, it’s time for the main event. The quilted bread is soft and fluffy. Inside it appears to be half a chicken, half a well-marinaded, slow-cooked, de-boned chicken. It’s gloriously oily, spicy and come-apart-on-your-fork soft. Combined with top-notch hummus, tzatziki-like yoghurt sauce and what I think is harissa (a fiery, Maghrebi paste) it’s near-perfect.

Having suffered repeated shawarma-based disappointment, I’ve wondered why I can’t resist the urge. Then I remember it’s because of places like Johnny Baghdad’s that take me back to within the ancient walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, shawarma in hand, ready for a little taste of paradise. Heck, this one might actually be better.

To review a cafe based on one kebab isn’t fair but I’d be surprised if the rest of the menu sucks, given the superlative strength of that one dish. I’ll be back to test that theory...unless shawarma is back on the menu.

Johnny Baghdad’s Cafe on the Corner, 52 Market Place, Masham, North Yorkshire HG4 4ED