Greater numbers of people take their meals in restaurants, food chains and by street food vendors. Unhygienic preparation of ready-to-eat food provides generous opportunities for contamination, growth or survival of foodborne bacterial pathogens. The present study was carried out to detect some foodborne bacterial pathogens in ready-to-eat shawarma from restaurants using traditional methods and real-time PCR. A total of 80 samples of shawarma, (40 each of chicken-shawarma and beef-shawarma sandwiches) were randomly collected from different restaurants in various districts of Damietta, Egypt. The obtained results using real-time PCR indicate that, the detection prevalence of pathogenic Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella spp., were 62.5%, 40%; 5%, 25% and 10%, 7.5% in chicken-shawarma and beef-shawarma respectively. Moreover, the incidence of Campylobacter jejuni was 15% in chicken-shawarma only. While, Listeria monocytogenes, was not detected in all examined shawarma sandwiches samples. Serotyping of isolated Escherichia coli and Salmonella revealed that Escherichia coli O119:H4, O126:H27, O127:H6 and O111:H4 serovars while, Salmonella Enteritidis, Salmonella Typhimurium and Salmonella Dublin serovars were identified in ready-to-eat shawarma with varying percentages.The results of this investigation indicate that foodborne pathogens were present in shawarma constitute a
potential public health hazard.