This is a Picture of Falafel

This is a picture of falafel. It may not resemble the falafel I normally love, but it is falafel. Alongside the falafel, there are sprouts, which makes no sense. There is some kind of avocado sauce in the pita, which also makes no sense. The pita is whole wheat, which I have no problem with in general, but I have never seen a whole wheat pita offered in the Middle East. I bought the falafel at the local co-op, where in addition to the grocery, there is a small restaurant that offers a daily buffet and sandwiches made to order. My son will order the grilled cheese because that is the only sandwich he eats.
At a local seafood restaurant located inside a local brewery, they also make falafel. It might seem odd to order falafel in a place that specializes in seafood, but I don’t think twice about it. If you can fry cod, you can fry falafel. I will order falafel wherever I am if it is on the menu. At the same seafood restaurant, they make quesadillas. A quesadilla is basically a grilled cheese sandwich in a tortilla. My son orders the quesadilla. I order the falafel. It comes with French fries.

Falafel, at its most basic definition, is a chickpea fritter. It is also a sandwich. In lieu of bread, one eats pita. Pita is among the most important breads ever invented. When fresh, pita provides a soft, delicate pocket to insert meats, vegetables, hard boiled eggs, tahini, humous (pronounced HU-MOOSE) and falafel. Pita is not difficult to make, but my pita is always a back and forth between puffing up and not puffing up. When the bread puffs in the oven, the feeling one gets is close the most happy a human can be. One feels accomplishment. Sabich is another delicious sandwich that comes in a pita. But that is for another discussion.
I was talking to a bartender the other day who works at a craft beer /bourbon bar across the street from a hipster dive bar that also serves food. “Do you know about the bar’s kitchen change?” I asked. The bar, owned by culinary trained chefs, was now letting a food truck run its kitchen. “Do they still make the falafel?” I asked. I had ordered that falafel on many date nights where my wife and I visited for dinner and then went across the street to the craft beer/bourbon bar for drinks. French fries could be ordered separately, which, of course, we did. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Falafel is an art form,” I answered. He nodded. We both seemed disappointed in the kitchen change. We were silent for several minutes, and then I ordered a craft beer.
Americans don’t seem to eat a lot of falafel. There are a few places in Lexington where one can eat falafel. Sahara, a local Middle Eastern restaurant and Skewers, another Middle Eastern restaurant, both wrap their falafel in factory made pita shipped in from Dearborn, Michigan. Skewers actually makes pita in house, but they don’t use it, for some reason, when they put together a falafel sandwich. Factory made pita destroys the entire falafel eating experience. Sushi connoisseurs claim that the fish is secondary to the rice. I won’t say the analogy holds true for falafel, but bad pita destroys the culinary experience. Good falafel cannot overcome bad pita. Good pita is culinary accomplishment.

In all of his writing, James Beard never mentioned falafel. Few of America’s famous food writers discuss falafel. Bobby Flay’s recipe for falafel includes Serrano chilies, which is absurd. Rap star Action Bronson enjoys falafel with weed. Anthony Bourdain mostly ignored falafel during his half-ass trip to Israel, but enjoyed it in Beirut, noting the two Sahyoun brothers who operate competing stands next to one another. One can’t visit Israel without trying the falafel at HaKosem (The Magician) or Mifgash Osher (Happiness Joint) in Tel Aviv. Mifgash Osher makes its falafel without parsley, and the balls come out crisp and yellow. When we were last at Mifgash Osher, I convinced my son that the yellow falafel was chicken, so he ate them. Despite claiming to be “half” Jewish, Bourdain skipped Tel Aviv during his Israel episode. Jonathan Gold discovered “Brooklyn” falafel at Los Angeles’ Madcapra. Gold recognizes Madcapra’s falafel as a fusion of sorts, a hybrid effort that does not hide its desire to drift from tradition or authenticity. “You will run into the occasional leaf of pungent Thai basil,” he comments on the fixings, “which is not a typical Israeli or Lebanese touch.” When we were in Brooklyn, we ate falafel at Kulushkat, and my then two year old son threw food on the floor. Kulushkat does not offer grilled cheese sandwiches.
Falafel is always wrapped in a story about authenticity. Palestinian? Israeli? Lebanese? Egyptian? Yemenite? Egyptian falafel is usually made with fava beans and is called ta’amaye. On her PBS cooking show, Julia Child was taught by Monique Barbeau how to make it. I do a wonderful impression of Julia Child called “Julia Child Sex Fiend,” but that’s not relevant for this discussion. Yotam Ottolenghi, Israel’s most famous chef, brought falafel to London, a city obsessed with curry, being racist, and eating pudding made out of blood. The English, through occupation, brought French fries to Israel, where they are called “chips” and often stuffed inside of pita bread with falafel.
Falafel has its own culinary tradition, but where that tradition begins is debated, and its origins typically revolve around where the person arguing is from: Yemen, Egypt, Israel, among the Palestinians. I came from a home where there were no food traditions. Suburban Miami, despite all the wonderful culinary adventures that might actually exist but were absent from our home, was not where I learned to appreciate food. My mother made four dishes: spaghetti and meat sauce, chicken breasts breaded and baked, meatloaf, and lasagna. We are not Italian. Nor is most of America, and yet, these Americanized and homogenized versions of an imaginary Italian cooking (minus the meatloaf) dominate many middle class homes across the country. We imagine some vision of Italian food, and we frequent those places that barely imagine it: Fazoli’s, Olive Garden, Pizza Hut. Effort is hardly needed in the American imaginary of cheap ethnic food even though the countries being imagined produce it better and often cheaper than our cheapest option.
My grandmother, who knew how to cook, never made falafel. She made grilled cheese sandwiches for me when I visited her home in Sable Chase, and she bought lox for me (but did not make it). That was our secret food tradition. In our home, I try to instill sandwich tradition via egg and cheese on challah (the yoke spills over onto the bread), lamb bacon and egg, homemade zatar bread and roasted pepper, and falafel. Not one tradition has stuck beyond the grilled cheese sandwich. All over America, we love grilled cheese and make it traditional. In Denmark, in West Market near our rented apartment, there were two stalls that sold falafel. We also found one stall that made grilled cheese sandwiches. I ordered one for my son.

I have long wanted falafel to be my family tradition. I am the only member of my nuclear family who has this desire. I track down falafel wherever I go, always in the hope of discovering the greatest falafel ever, whether in the obvious places like Tel Aviv, the global diasporas like Copenhagen, or the less obvious like Lexington, Kentucky. I imagine each city has its own secret falafel spot. Or, as Calvin Trillin thinks about Chinese food and the secret calligraphy along the wall in many Chinese restaurants, I imagine the blasé Middle Eastern restaurants in my town holding back on the pita and falafel. To us they serve factory pita and dried out chickpea fritters. To the insiders, they serve the real stuff.
Sushi was once rare and foreign to the American palette. Sushi is a Japanese sandwich that substitutes rice for bread. Raw fish was too bizarre and too much of a perceived threat to American health that most of middle America did not eat sushi until almost twenty years ago. I probably didn’t eat sushi until I was in my ’20s, and my parents never considered sushi an option when I was growing up in a city abundant with fish. “Raw fish! You’ll die!” They also don’t eat falafel. Today, every grocery store has a sushi counter, even the Kroger across the country line from us, a Kroger that doesn’t even sell beer, sells sushi. It does not sell falafel. In the Irma grocery story we frequented in Copenhagen, you could buy bags of pre-made frozen falafel. My daughter, though, kept insisting that we stop at one of the twenty sushi places along Vesterbrogade outside of our apartment.
Can falafel become the next sushi? If I were to hope so, it would only be in the hope that the overall quality will improve if awareness improves. There exits bad sushi in grocery stores across America. But there also exists very decent sushi. If Whole Foods started offering falafel alongside its in house pizza and sushi stands, I’d give it a try. I’m middle class. I shop at Whole Foods. Recently, I wrote an academic article about falafel called “Falafel Memories.” I have no clue if anybody read it. In my current book manuscript, I write about falafel, sabich, mayonnaise, mustard, hand drawn noodles, and pre-made salads. I have no clue if anybody will read it. Can an academic write about an everyday food such as falafel and call it an authentic piece of scholarly writing? Can an academic do so without resorting to the cliché critical lens of race, class, and gender? Just as sushi was foreign to most American palettes until recently, and just as falafel remains foreign to most American palettes, can scholarly palettes adapt to writing that does not fall back on patterns of critique or homogenized analysis? That stereotypical analysis — where every moment shudders with meaning — is an imaginary vision of what academic writing can and should discuss. That analysis speaks to a scholarly tradition, but not the tradition I feel a part of.
Still, I am obsessed with falafel, a fairly simple, yet entirely delicious fried chick pea ball. My children could care less. They like grilled cheese sandwiches.

