Yalla Bala

Yalla Bala is a Middle Eastern canteen serving chicken shawarma, grilled mushrooms, and golden and verdant falafels. The former pop-up is run by Ben Kotkis, a one-time support worker who found his calling in serving home-style food from the Levant.

Yalla Bala sits inside The Leederville Precinct. On any given day, you might see punters swarming Electric Lane and enjoy Kotkis’s cooking in the sunshine, with a beverage from the well-stocked bar at Servo.

Small details denote Yalla Bala’s cooking as a cut above the rest. The falafels are especially verdant, due to the extra herbs and zucchini in the chickpea mix. There’s an attractive sourness to the amba sauce, the vinegary mango pickle commonly associated with the famous Jewish Iraqi sandwich, the sabich. For a proper surge of heat, the zhug – a Yemeni condiment with green chilli and coriander – is the way to go. The flatbreads are plush and pliable and make excellent vehicles for the chicken and the falafels. Otherwise, order either on a plate, where they’re served alongside veg and sauces.

Kotkis draws from a wide range of influences for his cooking, from the Levant to his family’s European Jewish heritage (his mother is Russian Jewish, while his father is Lithuanian Jewish). Even the name of the business speaks to the food’s shared history: “yalla” is an Arabic word for “hurry”, while “bala” is short for balagan, the Hebrew word for “chaotic”. Kotkis’s mother Shelley helps out with the shop’s day-to-day, while Yalla Bala’s logo features the likeness of the family’s patriarch, Gavin.