Fatayer @ Millionaire Grill
9 Richmond St, Liverpool, L1 1EE
What is a pizza? It’s the question that sets the internet ablaze seemingly every few weeks, and not without cause.
Italians have a reputation for rabidly defending their ancient food traditions (even the ones like tiramisu and ciabatta which only stretch back as far as the 1970s) but, in my experience, this generally doesn’t extend to pizza.
With the exception of a handful of restaurants and hole-in-the-wall places in the Pendino and Decumani neighbourhoods of Naples — where it’s claimed the food originated — there’s a surprisingly lax attitude to what constitutes a pizza.
In fact, there are nearly as many regional variations as there are in the US — Roman pizza a taglio cut with scissors and sold by weight, deep-fried Puglian panzerotti, cheeseless Genovese pizza d’Andrea scattered with black olives and latticed with anchovies.
Visit a neighbourhood pizzeria almost anywhere on the boot and nine times out of ten its menu will include the patatine e wurstel — a pizza topped with fries and chopped up hotdog sausage. It will often be one of their best-selling items.
Another question — what is a fatayer? The definition of this is narrower, but only a little bit. Fatayer are pies common across the cuisines of the Levant and Arabian Peninsula. They are usually small (but sometimes not) and usually filled with minced meat or cheese (but sometimes not).
If you’re unfamiliar and think this sounds a lot like a borek or a spanakopita or a knish, you’d be right. If Neapolitan and New York-style pizza are estranged brothers, then fatayer and the pies of West Asia and Central Europe would be kissing cousins.
A further question — what do fatayer and pizza have in common? Usually not very much. But at Millionaire Grill on Richmond Street the two foods have been brought together in beautiful and delicious union.
At this tiny, brightly-lit takeaway, dishevelled revellers from the dives of nearby Williamson Square rub shoulders with international students and newly-minted Scousers who’ve made a home here after travelling from Syria or Kurdistan.
While most of these customers will choose a shawarma (either wrapped tightly as a cigar into crispy naan or loaded into soft samoon bread) the real pick is the mixed meat fatayer.
Dough of the kind familiar to anyone who has bought a Margherita from somewhere called Best Kebab is stuffed with tender chicken and lamb — both carved from the restaurant’s two huge doner spits — and covered in stringy yellow cheese. Cooked until crisp, it’s then served with pickled peppers and topped with garlic or chilli sauce.
Is it a fatayer? Is it a pizza? Who knows, but it is the best way to spend £5 in the city centre.
