# How do you eat falafel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 29, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036 "2003-04-29T23:58:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/1 "2003-04-29T23:58:03Z")
The package says sour pickles along with hummus and tomatoes. Does anyone do that? It also lists peperoncini and cucumbers which I find very, very good. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/2 "2003-04-30T00:08:34Z")
On pita, with tomatoes, lettuce, and a good bit of tzatziki. Now I’m getting hungry. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/3 "2003-04-30T00:40:04Z")
Being a vegephobe, and considering the fact that falafels always contain vegetables, I have to say that the “falafel” is well named. It’s foul, and it’s awful. Foul-awful. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/4 "2003-04-30T01:08:37Z")
Byzantine. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dinahmoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8797f3/32.png) [@dinahmoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dinahmoe)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/5 "2003-04-30T01:10:35Z")
How do I eat falafel? In large amounts. I love that stuff. The MikeTurk recipe is the way I usually have it. tracer, why are you a vegephobe? Did an artichoke kill your puppy or something? ---
**Author:** ![chattywine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5daacb/32.png) [@chattywine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chattywine)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/6 "2003-04-30T01:16:09Z")
**tracer** …oooh you reeeally must experience the falafel from Falafel’s Drive-In at least once!!! Tis in SJ on Steven’s Creek past Valley Fair ::sighs:: eat em’ with lots of tzatziki and hotsauce here…uhmm uhmmm uhmmm > [@](#): > > Did an artichoke kill your puppy or something? the visuals! the visuals! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/7 "2003-04-30T01:41:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dinahmoe \* > \*\*tracer, why are you a vegephobe? Did an artichoke kill your puppy or something? \*\* We vegephobes don’t **need** a reason to be the way we are. We are vegephobes because it is the **right** thing to be. _Vegetables are evil!_ And they taste yucky, too. ---
**Author:** ![martin\_ibn\_martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@martin\_ibn\_martin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/martin_ibn_martin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/8 "2003-04-30T01:53:38Z")
Try it also with a sauce made of Tahini (sesame paste) thinned with lemon juice and seasoned with Garlic. Use a bit of yogurt or water if you’re not so into the lemon juice. **Tracer** , I’m sure you’ll find it amusing that the word “Felafel” comes from the Arabic root “Foul”, (pronounced more like “fool”), which refers to most legumes. Mostly, eat it how ya like it. Martin ---
**Author:** ![martin\_ibn\_martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@martin\_ibn\_martin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/martin_ibn_martin)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/9 "2003-04-30T01:59:00Z")
Try it also with a sauce made of Tahini (sesame paste) thinned with lemon juice and seasoned with Garlic. Use a bit of yogurt or water if you’re not so into the lemon juice. **Tracer** , I’m sure you’ll find it amusing that “felafel” comes from the Arabic root for all legumes, “foul” which is pronounced more like “fool” Eat it how ya like it. Martin ---
**Author:** ![Phelan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Phelan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phelan)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/10 "2003-04-30T02:28:11Z")
On a pita with whatever the restaurant has to put on it. Lettuce, tomato, white sauce, other stuff they have, and hot sauce. Definately hot sauce. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/11 "2003-04-30T02:30:27Z")
Does anyone do the sour pickles? :dubious: Thanks for the yogurt ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/12 "2003-04-30T02:40:44Z")
> [@](#): > > On pita, with tomatoes, lettuce, and a good bit of tzatziki. Now I’m getting hungry. That’s how I do it. Unless I’m having a shawarma sandwich, in which case I get a few falafel balls on the side and just dip them in tahini. I don’t get the sour pickles (what are they, anyway? Beets?) unless they are automatically given. Zankou Chicken (a local chain) serves the pickles, and I eat some of them. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/13 "2003-04-30T03:35:15Z")
Tomatoes, good lettuce, and maybe some olives or cucumber slices on a pita works well. But then again, just eating the falafel by itself (with fingers, of course!) works pretty well, too. The thing with falafel, though, is there’s a huge gap between the bad stuff and the good stuff. Done right, it’s ambrosial, but remembering some of the bad falafel I’ve had, I can understand that someone who’s only had it once (from the wrong place) might be turned off. And **tracer**? When you have fried fish, do you eat the hush puppies? Because falafels are basically the same thing, except that they taste “meatier”. Yes, I know that they don’t actually contain any meat, but they taste that way. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/14 "2003-04-30T03:45:58Z")
After the last post, I had to look up falafel at [m-w.com](http://m-w.com) to find out exactly what it was. I had always assumed it was similar to couscous or something but they’re basically hushpuppies?! And you eat them in a sandwich!? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/15 "2003-04-30T10:38:44Z")
Yeah, falafels are generally similar to hushpuppies, but made with chickpeas (at least all the ones I’ve eaten.) I like mine with hummus, pickles, fresh sauerkraut, tomatoes, onions, and this hot sauce the Turkish place down the street serves. I like mine either in a pita or in this rather large Turkish flatbread with sesame seeds whose name escapes me at the moment. Good falafels are AWESOME. Being quite the carnivore, I used to always eat doner kebaps (Turkish gyros) until I discovered just how good a properly prepared falafel is. It truly is the food of the gods. ---
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/16 "2003-04-30T11:21:13Z")
Falafel bars in Amsterdam (which are multiplying like crazy, so best not to go here, **tracer** ) serve the stuff in a pita, after which you go to a help-yourself-as-much-as-you-want salad bar, with pickles, onions, cooked-and-sliced carrots, red beets, white and red cabbage with a sour dressing, pickled chili peppers, olives, sauces (garlic, chopped onion, sambal, and in better ones humus). I’m sure I’m leaving some stuff out. Great if you want to have a snack but still want to convince yourself that you actually ate something healthy. Whether this is authentic, I dunno. Don’t care either, given how good it tastes. A friend of mine had been to Israel; I don’t recall her chiding the falafel bars here for being different. ---
**Author:** ![Breezy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@Breezy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Breezy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/17 "2003-04-30T20:37:04Z")
What is Falafel?? I’m confused? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/18 "2003-04-30T21:02:18Z")
Little JEwish hush puppy things made of chick peas instead of corn meal. Eaten in pocket bread, “pita” with various and sundry other things. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/19 "2003-04-30T22:52:33Z")
They’re Jewish? I always thought they were general-Middle Eastern. (The name sounds Arabic, anyway.) ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036/20 "2003-04-30T23:04:16Z")
The mideastern deli here does a great sandwich with falafel, roasted eggplant, and tzatziki on pita … sigh. I want one now. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-eat-falafel/172036.md?page=2)