OMG (Oasis Mediterranean Grill)

OMG carves its rotisserie chicken to order, folds it into either Saj or warm pita with pickled turnips, pickles, garlic sauce and hot sauce, and treats that wrap as the order most downtown Peterborough tables open with. The same counter also serves an Aleppo Platter — slices of Aleppo-style shawarma with fries — named for the Syrian city the founding family came from. The shawarma is the engine of the menu, and the wrap is the entry point. Almost everything else on the board branches outward from there, into platters, rice bowls, poutines and family-sized feasts. Oasis Mediterranean Grill is what the sign reads; OMG is what the TikTok handle, the regulars, and the menu cover have settled on instead.

Beyond the chicken wrap, the menu carries Beef and Lamb Shawarma in a wrap, on a rice platter, over fries as a poutine, and as the cornerstone of the Aleppo Platter. The Mezza Platter pulls hummus, baba ghanouge, kebbeh, falafel, grape leaves, tabbouli and warm pita onto one tray for a shared opener. Kafta and chicken kebabs run their own wrap and platter lanes alongside the shawarma. Vegetarian options are not an afterthought — the Falafel Wrap, Falafel Platter, Falafel Salad Bowl, hummus, baba ghanouge, stuffed grape leaves and a vegetarian samosa all hold their own beside the meat. Baklava finishes most tables, and the house garlic sauce is sold by the takeout container for diners who want to keep the wrap going at home.

The menu reads Middle Eastern at its core and inclusive at its edges. The poutine section — Chicken Shawarma Poutine, Beef and Lamb Shawarma Poutine, Falafel Poutine — makes the bridge between shawarma and the country's own comfort dish without treating either as a punchline. Halal certification lets a Muslim diner order anywhere on the menu, and gluten-free and vegan accommodations sit on the same board, called out where they apply rather than corralled into a separate menu. The OMG Feasts run further in the same direction: Dinner for Two builds rice, two proteins, salad, hummus or baba ghanouge, two pitas and two drinks into one order; the Family Dinner for Four doubles the proteins and adds skewers. A kitchen that prices, plates and routes that much variety through a single counter is built for repeat use, not for the one-time visit.

The restaurant opened on George Street North in November 2016. Mohammad Alftih and Randa Kharboutly — Randa also appears as Randa Alftih on later coverage — launched OMG together with their business partner Kenzu Abdella, and local reporting at the time framed the family as Syrian newcomers from Aleppo finding a downtown Peterborough storefront for a kitchen they already knew. The Aleppo Platter on the menu is named directly for the founders' home city, and it sits on the current daily board rather than as a one-off tribute. Three years after opening, Peterborough Business Excellence Awards named Mohammad Alftih and Randa Kharboutly Immigrant Entrepreneurs of the Year. The Alftih family and Kenzu Abdella are still the people behind the counter.

OMG runs Monday through Saturday from eleven in the morning until nine at night, which puts the kitchen on a six-day week with Sunday as the only dark day. The dining room is small enough that most weekday orders move out the door as takeout; delivery runs through the usual third-party platforms, pickup through the website. The garlic sauce is a menu item of its own, sold by the takeout container — the kind of detail a kitchen confident in one of its components puts on the price list rather than off it. Ten years in, the George Street North storefront still keeps the same hours, the same shawarma off the rotisserie, the same garlic sauce on the price list.