Four Flavours Felafel

Rishon Lezion, Israel. Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Four Flavours Felafel, or The hunt for Dive-In food

One of the first things that we like to do on visiting Israel is to eat felafel from one of the street vendors. This one of the authentic local flavours, it tastes great, and is our personal cost-of-living / inflation indicator.

So imagine our disappointment when we could not find a place selling felafel in Rishon, which proclaims itself to be the fourth largest town/city in Israel. There are endless numbers of places selling shawarma, chicken, hamburgers (beefburgers for the kosher klan), but the once ubiquitous felafel begins to look like an endangered species.

Our hostess Yardena who has lived in Rishon for the past 30 years has no idea where we can find felafel.  I ask Avi in the modern shopping mall who has just sold us a local Sim card for our phone where is the best felafel.  “Go out, turn left and there is one up the road, four flavours, its really good.”

The first place we come to is not four flavours felafel, or even one flavour, but a fancy sliced meat/ shawarma sandwich shop. “No we don’t sell felafel, go up the road”.

The next place we see only sells roast chicken and such. Marching on in the fierce heat of an early October day  we cross to the sunny side of the street to another place  which looks likely. “No,” says the shawarma seller, “go up the road, four directions”. 

Not sure what that means we cross a big junction and back to the shady side where there is a pizza place and beside it a joint selling the local equivalent of KFC.   "Felafel? Go up the road".

Yardena, our hostess, is looking increasingly stressed, hot, and bothered about being dragged all over her home town in search of the mythical felafel.  Determined not to be defeated, we press on.

Like travellers in the dessert, just when you begin to lose hope, you see a mirage, and as we got closer the mirage turned out to be... Four Flavours Felafel. We speed up like horses sensing water. It’s real, and there is a queue, but there is also an empty table outside the kiosk. We collapse onto the chairs.

As the mist clears from our eyes we try to focus on the menu on the wall behind the deep-fryers. There really are four different flavours of felafel. This is a first. We have never seen, tasted, eaten anything but traditional felafel, the crushed chick-pea balls deep-fried and stuffed into a pitta with assorted vegetables, pickles and smothered in runny tehina sauce.

“Spicy - with peppers”
“Green - with coriander and parsley”
“Sesame - with sesame seeds”
“Traditional”

And the price, 15 Shekels (£2.50) for a pitta portion, or 8 Shekels for a half pitta.  No inflation here.

Wow. What a choice, what a price. We order a dozen balls of mixed flavours to taste as well as ordering our own choice in a pitta. Vicky goes for Green, I opt for Sesame. Yardena says she won’t have one. I think this is out of respect for its dubious effect on her diet but also because she hasn’t eaten this peasant street food in decades.

Respectable middle class matrons really don’t do that sort of thing, except for our Vicky who always was and always will be an adventurous wild thing who could not care less for conventions in such matters of taste and memories.

Of course there is a queue, well not exactly a queue as we experience in London, more like a free-flowing pressing group in which you have to be constantly alert to the person whose urgent need is so great that the niceties of western social practices have to be pushed aside, as you will be if you don’t adopt the right stance and activate the space shield so popular in space adventures such as Thunderbirds or Star Wars.

Vicky’s elemental instincts, youth training and years in the army have groomed her for such moments. I leave her to it and retreat to the table for a chat with a still dazed-looking Yardena.

Vicky almost disappears behind the wall of people waving money and imprecations at the single woman trying to take the orders, cook the felafel, juggle the four flavours, slice and stuff the pitta,  pour on a green sauce and top it with a golden brown lump which turns out to be a deep-fried, oil-saturated potato --- guaranteed mega-cholesterol and a million calories.

Its not long till Vicky dumps a yellow paper bag on the table. This is the 12 assorted-flavours felafel balls. While still absorbing the long-awaited moment, Vicky returns from the melee and hands me a half pitta overflowing with felafel balls, pickles and covered in a green sauce on top of which sits the killer potato. She leaves me and goes back into the scum to grab her pitta and add more pickles from the trays in front of her.

I am overwhelmed. Dump the potato. Stare at the green-sauce covered pitta with mountain peaks of piping hot, freshly cooked felafel. There does not appear to be any way to get this into my mouth. Yes, yes, you have to eat it without a fork. This is not fast-food, this is dive-in food.

So I adopt the position. I lean forward as far as I can. Stretch my arms forward. Bend my neck. Lower my mouth to the pitta - and dive in.

What bliss, transportation to another world. Tehina and green sauce are running over my fingers. I can feel the dab of it which has stuck to the tip of my nose. More juice is trickling down my chin. Ingredients are tumbling out and onto the floor between my carefully parted legs.

My mouth is full with exploding culinary delights.

I am in heaven.