Bryan Yealy, corporate chef
Pentagon City
Alexandria, Va.

Category: Quick service

The Capital Restaurant Group opened its first Pik-a-pita 10 years ago and at one point had four venues. All but the Pentagon City location have closed. Corporate chef Bryan Yealy describes the concept and why it works in this location.

Concept: When you go to these food courts, you know what you typically find. This Pik-a-pita was set up to give food-court diners another choice, something lighter and more appealing. We were hitting that crowd that wanted to eat better. We’re talking 90 percent cooking from scratch. It’s basically a Mediterranean sandwich shop with grilled pita.

Menu hits: Pretty much all the pita wraps. We do falafel pita with tahini sauce. Probably our chicken is the most popular. It’s what you would call shawarma. We marinate the chicken breasts with Lebanese olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, onions, garlic and a 7-spice blend that we make. We put them on the rotating spit and slice the chicken off like you would a gyro. The sandwich has lemon garlic dressing and romaine.

We do a sampler plate with fattoush (Lebanese bread salad), falafel, hummous and baba ghanouj. It’s like a petite mezza (appetizer assortment), served with pita. It’s a really nice, light lunch.

We try to be as true to the cuisine as we can without Americanizing the food. We want somebody who has been in Lebanon or lived in Lebanon to say, “This is some of the best I’ve had.” And sometimes people don’t understand it. Even people from the metro area raise their eyebrows when you say “sumac and parsley salad.”

Menu misses: We did pull the spit-roasted lamb off, although it was probably the best product we had and the closest thing to traditional gyro you could find. We served it with a cucumber dressing, almost like tzatziki.

The only complaint we ever get is, “We just want a regular gyro.” (Pik-a-pita serves the shaved meat and garnishes on top of the grilled pita, not in it. It is a more traditional presentation, but not what many expect.)

What customers remember: When you walk up to the window, we’ve set it up with the appearance of the Mediterranean, with jars of pickled grape leaves and pickled vegetables and cured meats hanging. We make our own baklava and we keep it up front in a big pastry dish. Most of the staff is from Lebanon, and they know about the food. Most of our lunch business comes from the Pentagon, and a lot of those people have traveled.

Making this food accessible: We make sure that people who work at Pik-a-pita believe in it and know about it, so that anybody from the front counter to the back can talk about the food. They know you have bulgur, parsley, mint and sumac in the tabbouleh.