Midtown Lunch

I recently snuck away from the sweaty Philly streets to the equally sweaty streets of Israel. In between taking in the amazing ancient sites, I did some eating. And there were more than a few lunches that Philly should take note of.

1. Street Food

First off, the street food scene is as real as it gets. At the base of the Druze town of Daliat Harmel is a market for locals with clothing, random household appliances, dvds, and lots of olives. Sharing the tarped outdoor space  is a group of friendly women making fresh laffa bread stuffed with different vegetables.

How could I resist? My fresh from the oven laffa bread was stuffed with spinach and labneh- a kind of sour cream.

And right by the laughing laffa ladies was a frank faced fava man, dishing out servings of fresh fava beans from his vat and dusting each batch with cumin and salt. Philly should take note, and get ourselves a fava cart as an alternative snack to say, pork roll. (kidding… mostly)

2. Sandwiches

Philly knows some things about sandwiches. Whenever out of town friends ask about the can’t miss food spots, I can’t help but direct them to our fabulous sandwich spots. But Israel has a few sandwich tricks up their sleeves that we can only dream about.

While walking through the town of Svat, some young ladies accosted us and put falafel samples in our face that made me realize that everything I knew about falafel was just wrong. The place is called The Balcony and here, they cut pita with box cutters. And they top the sandwich off with french fries. Bad ass.

The falafel were fried to a crisp and crazy moist inside. If Maoz’s falafel ever got introduced to these, they would feel really really bad about themselves.

You can’t talk about Israel’s food without talking about shawarma, right? At Hakosem in Tel Aviv my luscious pieces of shawarma meat came, in typical Israel fashion, topped with greatness- eggplant and a falafel. And, also common to Israeli restaurants, there was a bar of pickled things to add to your plate.

I didn’t realize that schnitzel was a common Israeli dish, but  many casual eateries churn these breaded chicken cutlet sandwiches out like its no big deal.

3. Kubbe

While I have enjoyed fried kibbe at Hamifgash and Alyan’s I had never even imagined it unfried and in soup form. An Israeli solider introduced me to kubbe soup, which can be made with beets (picture at top from a small restaurant in the Jerusalem market called Rahmo) or lemony (picture at bottom), both are kind of sweet and sour and both feature vegetables plus the semolina-meat dumplings. The contrasts of flavors and textures makes this soup  so satisfying that I lapped it up despite the high temperatures.

And while we are on the topic of awesome things that Israel has but we don’t,  can’t Wawa get some chocolate bars with pop rocks in them and peanut butter flavored cheetos?