When Mohammad Abutaha moved to the Bay Area from Jordan as an engineering student in 2011, he spent his first years desperately trying to scratch an important itch: a shawarma that could anchor him to his new home. He and his friends would flock to any new Arab restaurant, only to find hulking, burrito-like wraps with shredded lettuce, hummus and chopped tomatoes and cucumbers stuffed inside.

“The early Arabs to the Bay Area who were making these restaurants weren’t necessarily thinking about if this food is authentic or not — more thinking, are Americans going to buy this food?” he said. It’s not that what’s on offer at local restaurants was bad per se, he conceded — but those versions didn’t give him “that shawarma feeling.”

So he started making his own. And in February, he opened Shawarmaji, a lean counter-service spot hosted by commissary space Forage Kitchen in Oakland. Every day, he assembles a giant skewer of chicken and hustles it through the kitchen and onto the vertical grill out front, where it turns into shawarma wraps, loaded fries and other treats.

The shawarma, the soul of the restaurant, must be cooked on a vertical spit with proper stacking. While deceptively simple in appearance, achieving the perfect “meat tornado” shape initially vexed Abutaha: Gravity would cause the stack of ungainly chicken parts to peak in the middle, and their oblong and inconsistent shapes made achieving an even radius on all sides difficult. After studying many YouTube videos — few books teach the art of stacking — he now uses deboned chicken leg quarters in his stacks, which are juicier but not as uniform as chicken breasts.

The shape isn’t just for looks: Uniformity allows the skewer to cook evenly, so that you’re not gambling with burnt or undercooked meat. It’s the same principle applied when pounding out a pork chop for schnitzel or smoothing over cake batter in a pan. At Shawarmaji, each piece of chicken is marinated in a slippery mixture of yogurt and spices. And cutting meat off the skewer is its own art: The shawarma cook must cut just the right amount off to get to a good ratio of toasty surface area to tender interior, with which every bite can have its own sense of percussion.

My favorite way of eating it is in the Arabi plate ($12), which is Abutaha’s favorite as well. The slim wrap, containing just chicken and a little bit of pickle, is treated much like a roulade: sliced into bite-size rounds and served with a side of hot sauce, french fries and pungent toum.

That toum is an important element. The white sauce, a garlic puree emulsified with oil and a little bit of lemon juice and water, pleasingly overwhelms your senses with garlic flavor; it’s almost too powerful. Where many other places serve a watered-down version that more resembles garlic mayonnaise, Shawarmaji’s version offers striking clarity — a suitable foil to the toasted cumin and coriander of the chicken, the fries and even the plate of avocado toast you might whip together the next morning with leftover sauce.

The Arabi plate is also the option to get to build the ever-elusive Perfect Bite. It includes a whole lot of toum, which allows you to experience a mixture of flavors and textures all at once: briny pickles, crisp and juicy chicken, creamy fried potato and nostril-clearing garlic puree. (The restaurant gives out free breath mints with every order.)

Now, this is what gives Abutaha that shawarma feeling: hovering over the flat-top as a wrap grills, and a smidge of garlic sauce creeps out and bubbles, caramelizing on the grill’s hot surface. The plume of aroma brings him back to the streets of Amman, where he’d find himself snacking on shawarma with friends three to four times a week.

But don’t confuse Abutaha’s dedication to emulating his memories for traditionalism. For the wrap, he uses Mi Rancho tortillas because they’re easier to source here than shrak, the Levantine flatbread commonly used for shawarma where he’s from. He said that he got the idea in a roundabout way from his Californian mother, who would make tacos back home in Amman with shrak. The wrap is then pressed on a flat-top grill to cook up like the crisp, dorado-style burritos found at La Taqueria.

Other variations on the basic shawarma wrap include Abboudi style ($12), with fries inside, and Rabieh style ($11), with melted cheddar cheese and hot sauce. I like fries in my carne asada burrito (and chips in my sandwiches), so that’s why I think Abboudi style works: The fries give each bite an extra crunch and also soak up the spiced chicken juice and toum if you let it sit for a minute. He’d originally wanted to run the latter with American cheese, the way he likes it, but relented after his family protested. Incidentally, he also endorses dipping the wrap in barbecue sauce, though you’ll have to provide the sauce yourself.

Additional options on the slim menu include a snackable carne asada fries-like treatment ($12) with chopped shawarma, lots of toum and cucumber pickles, as well as a falafel sandwich ($10) on a crusty French roll that makes it a dead ringer for a banh mi. All of the food is takeout- and delivery-friendly, a boon to the restaurant right now. It’s easy enough to grab a wrap and walk over to Lake Merritt to eat in the sunshine.

Enjoy that proximity to the lake while you can: Shawarmaji’s run at Forage Kitchen is coming to a close at the end of August, though Abutaha’s already looking for a standalone brick-and-mortar space to call home. He’s not worried about the impact of COVID-19 on his business: “We’re built for takeout,” he said. In fact, Shawarmaji’s been doing really well, since the operation is so lean and its centerpiece is a walkable street food, anyway.

It’s a big step for Abutaha, who fell into the food business. Four years ago, on a lark, he catered a friend’s birthday party with shawarma bites, an early version of the ones served on the Arabi plate. They were a hit, he said. Shortly after, he ordered a $700 shawarma machine from Amazon complete with a vertical rotating skewer and sideways burners, to practice with. “I’m not really sure what came over me,” he said.

He’s using a more intense machine now, but Abutaha told me that he still has that old one, which is light enough to take on the road. “It’s still at my house for having fun. I’m planning on doing some weird messing around with meats,” he said. “Like, the other day I was talking to my friend, what if you put slices of bacon between the chicken?” That’s not halal, I told him. Yeah, he said, but it’d be good as hell, right?

Shawarmaji. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Takeout and delivery available; no dine-in. 478 25th St., Oakland. 510-397-9817 or www.instagram.com/theshawarmaji/

Soleil Ho is The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic. Email: soleil@sfchronicle.com

Since 2019, Soleil Ho has been The Chronicle's Restaurant Critic, spearheading Bay Area restaurant recommendations through the flagship Top Restaurants series. Ho also writes features and cultural commentary, specializing in the ways that our food reflects the way we live. Their essay on pandemic fine dining domes was featured in the 2021 Best American Food Writing anthology. Ho also hosts The Chronicle's food podcast, Extra Spicy, and has a weekly newsletter called Bite Curious. Previously, Ho worked as a freelance food and pop culture writer, as a podcast producer on the Racist Sandwich, and as a restaurant chef. Illustration courtesy of Wendy Xu.