If you’re looking for Turkish food in Brooklyn, expect plenty of grilled meat, kebabs, shawarma, warm bread and a table that gets better once the mezze starts arriving. Shawarma Mia brings Turkish and Mediterranean cuisine together at 67 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217, with shawarma, Adana kebab, bowls, pita, wraps and a long list of fresh sides on the current menu.
Turkish cuisine is part of the wider Mediterranean food story, but the two terms aren’t interchangeable.
Mediterranean food covers a huge area, from Turkey and Greece to parts of the Levant, North Africa and Southern Europe. There is plenty of overlap, but each country has its own dishes, breads, spices and cooking traditions.
The Turkish grill is a big part of the picture.
Think skewered meats, seasoned ground-meat kebabs and food cooked hard and fast over heat. There are also flatbreads, yogurt-based accompaniments, rice, bulgur and cold or warm dishes served alongside the main event.
For casual street food, bread matters just as much. Meat can be packed into pita, rolled into a wrap or served alongside salads and sauces.
This is where the lines get a little softer.
Hummus, baba ghanoush, falafel, tahini, fresh salads, grilled meat and vegetables appear across different Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food traditions. You’ll also see plenty of shared ingredients, even when the final dishes aren’t prepared in exactly the same way.
That’s why a restaurant can have clear Turkish roots without every item being exclusively Turkish.
Shawarma Mia describes its menu as built on Turkish and Mediterranean roots. Rather than limiting itself to one narrow regional menu, it combines shawarma, kebabs and grilled meat with mezze, bowls, falafel and house sauces.
That makes it useful if you’re looking for a Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn but you’re also very happy to end up with hummus, harissa and a loaded shawarma bowl on the same order.
You don’t need to know the family tree of every kebab before ordering one. A few basics make the menu much easier to read.
Shawarma and döner are related vertical rotisserie traditions, but they aren’t simply two names for the exact same dish.
Both involve stacking seasoned meat on a vertical spit and slicing the cooked outer layers as the meat turns.
At Shawarma Mia, the chicken and beef shawarma are marinated in-house for hours before going onto the vertical spit. The meat is slow-roasted and carved fresh from the shawarma grill.
So if you’ve searched for doner-style meat but landed on the shawarma menu, the cooking method may look familiar even though the seasoning and finished dish take a different route.
Kebab is a broad category rather than one single recipe.
Shawarma Mia’s current menu includes Adana Kebab, Kofta Kebab and Beef Shish Kebab, along with chicken and other grilled proteins.
Shish-style kebab uses pieces of meat cooked on skewers. Adana and kofta move into seasoned ground-meat territory, which gives them a different texture from both shish and shaved shawarma.
The meat may get your attention first, but the sides are where you can change the whole order.
The current menu includes hummus, baba ghanoush, spicy ezme, sumac onion, fried eggplant, cucumber salad, tabbouleh, pickles and fresh chopped salad.
Then pick a sauce. Current choices include Garlic Toum, Tahini, Tzatziki, Harissa, Amba and House Hot Sauce.
If shawarma is usually your default order, Adana is worth knowing about before you automatically go back to it.
Adana kebab is made from seasoned ground meat formed around a skewer and grilled.
The important difference for ordering purposes is texture. You’re getting grilled, seasoned meat rather than thin slices carved from a rotating spit.
Shawarma Mia currently serves Adana Kebab as a bowl and in pita, baguette or wrap form.
So an Adana kebab Brooklyn search doesn’t necessarily have to end with a formal plated meal. You can eat it as a quick sandwich too.
Döner and shawarma share the same basic visual idea: seasoned meat rotating vertically beside a heat source and being shaved as the outside cooks.
The traditions developed differently, though, so the marinades, meats, seasonings and usual accompaniments can change.
At Shawarma Mia, the restaurant calls what it serves shawarma, so that’s the wording to use when ordering.
Choose shawarma when you want thin, carved meat with those crisp roasted edges.
Go for kebab when you want grilled meat with a firmer bite, whether that’s chunks of Beef Shish or a seasoned ground-meat option such as Adana or Kofta.
There isn’t a correct answer hiding here. It’s lunch, not an exam.
The current menu gives you plenty of routes into the grill side without having to order the same thing every visit.
The Adana Kebab Bowl comes with your choice of seven sides and one sauce.
If you’d rather eat it handheld, Adana is also available in pita, baguette or wrap, with five sides and one sauce.
That makes Adana easy to try without changing the whole way you normally order.
The three core shawarma choices are chicken shawarma, lamb and beef shawarma and mix shawarma.
All three can be ordered as bowls or in pita, baguette and wrap form.
The mixed option is useful if you’re trying the restaurant for the first time and can’t decide which shawarma to commit to.
Beyond shawarma, there is Beef Shish Kebab, Kofta Kebab, falafel and several other grilled options.
Build a bowl around the meat, or add mezze separately if you’re sharing. The side list is long enough to go fresh and sharp with salads and pickles or heavier with hummus, baba ghanoush and fried eggplant.
Browse the full kebabs, shawarma and mezze menu or order online.
Shawarma Mia is at 67 Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn. If you’re coming from Atlantic Avenue, Downtown Brooklyn or another nearby area, check your route before heading over rather than relying on a vague “just around the corner” promise.
Bowls make sense when you want the full spread of meat, vegetables and sides without putting everything inside bread.
Shawarma Mia bowls currently come with seven sides and one sauce, so there’s enough room to make the order feel like a proper Brooklyn lunch rather than shawarma plus a token salad leaf.
For takeout, the sandwich menu is easier to carry.
Chicken shawarma, mixed shawarma, lamb & beef, Adana, Kofta and Beef Shish can all be ordered in pita, baguette or wrap form.
Shawarma Mia is currently at:
67 Sixth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Current hours are 11 AM–11 PM Sunday through Wednesday and 11 AM–12 AM Thursday through Saturday. Pickup and delivery are available through its online ordering platform.
The restaurant doesn’t need to pretend every item belongs to one cuisine. Its own story is built around both.
Shawarma Mia was co-founded in 2022 and is run by father-and-son team John and Shawn Isikli. The business says the family brings more than 40 years of hospitality experience to the Brooklyn restaurant.
Shawn was born and raised in Brooklyn, while the menu itself is described as drawing on Turkish and Mediterranean roots.
Read more about the family-owned Turkish & Mediterranean restaurant.
The site states that food is prepared daily, with in-house marination used for the shawarma. Chicken and beef spend hours in the restaurant’s spice blend before going onto the vertical spit, and the cooked meat is sliced fresh from the grill.
That is a much better thing to talk about than vague claims about “authenticity.”
If you’re new to Turkish or Mediterranean food, you don’t have to start with the most unfamiliar thing on the menu.
Go with chicken shawarma if that’s already familiar. Try Adana if you want to move further into the grill menu. Add hummus, ezme or baba ghanoush on the side and work out what earns a repeat order.
If you want something easy to get into, try Adana kebab, shawarma or a grilled kebab with a few mezze sides. At Shawarma Mia, Adana is available as both a bowl and a sandwich, while the shawarma can be ordered several different ways.
Turkish cuisine is one of the many cuisines found around the Mediterranean region. Mediterranean food is a much broader label covering several countries and food traditions. Ingredients and dishes often overlap, but that doesn’t make them interchangeable.
Yes. The current Shawarma Mia menu lists Adana Kebab as a bowl and in pita, baguette or wrap form.
No. Shawarma and döner both use vertical rotisserie cooking, but they come from different culinary traditions and can differ in meat, seasoning and accompaniments.
Yes. Shawarma Mia currently offers online ordering for pickup and delivery. Adana, Kofta, Beef Shish and several shawarma options are available in bowls or handheld formats.
Start with the grill item you actually want, add the sides that sound good and leave enough room to try something different next time.
Explore kebabs, shawarma and mezze, read about the family-owned Turkish & Mediterranean restaurant, or order online for pickup or delivery.
