Lunchtime

On the days that I spend in the city, I do a lot of walking. I walk to the beach, I walk to the Arab markets in Jaffa, I walk through the shouks, I walk where my feet take me. Some days I find new, secret avenues of shade and some days I sit down to read my book in parks that now seem like old friends. But most of what I do is walk.

That walking, it turns out, burns a lot of calories. On average I will spend four or five hours just meandering up and down streets, looking into store windows, sipping an iced coffee as I make my way through new playlists on my iPod.

 

When my feet get tired and the sun becomes overbearing, a shady place for lunch is the perfect way to refuel. I’ve refined my lunch-seeking technique in the past few weeks, but the basic principle remains the same: find a place where there are no English menus (better if there are no menus at all), where local men in stained shirts eat wordlessly and service is brusque to the point of offensive. This is where the food is cheap, honest and filling. If you see flies or the occasional pigeon flying through the restaurant – plus ten points.  

The local favorite is a dish that I’ve come to adore. It may be the thing I miss most when my plane leaves in three days. Hummus has always been a staple of my diet, but I fear that my homecoming may mark the end of my tenure as a hummus purchaser. It will never be as good as it is here.

Chummos Ful, or “Hummus, fool!” as I pronounced it when I ordered it for the first time, is the memory of Israel that is likely to linger longest and strongest in my sensory-centric brain.

It’s one of the simplest dishes I’ve eaten here, which most likely explains its deliciousness. A shallow bowl is smeared with a base layer of plain yet luscious hummus.  The silky, mashed quagmire of chickpeas creates a basin into which is layered a puddle of warm fava beans stewed with garlic, tomato, cumin and lemon. This brown and white bowl of delectable gloop is slicked with a few lashes of fluorescent green olive oil, and finished with by plopping a hard boiled egg in the center and quickly slicing it into a dozen skinny pieces. This is bowl #1.

For accoutrements you are served three very important things. Firstly: pita, here serving as both utensil and foodstuff. But this is not pita like what I’ve ever been used to. Always freshly baked, the puffy circles still seem to be deflating when they arrive stacked two or three high on a little plate. The dense fluff of airy start is riddled with vacuous pockets, that when you drag through the puree of beans manages to latch onto anything and everything in its path, delivering to your mouth a perfect bite of chewy, glossy, bean and bread proclamation.

Also brought to the table are sides: A quartered white onion, which is meant to be peeled apart, layer by layer, to act as an occasional palate cleanser, sharp and sweet and watery. A spicy, green, peppery dressing sits in a small bowl for those that like a little kick. I prefer to dump two-thirds of this mixture into my hummus at the beginning, swirling it into the beans with my first piece of pita.

Lastly, a large plate of sliced, sweet and sour pickled cucumber, bright green like so much else on the table. I think these little morsels are meant to serve much like the onion, as a mid-meal break from the beans and pita and beans and pita. I like to save them to the end and load up on a bunch of acidic, crunchy plant fiber as a bright refreshing conclusion to lunch.

All this, plus a drink, runs about 20 New Israeli Shekles (sheks, as people are known to say), the equivalent of about $6 U.S.

Falafel on the streets of New York just isn’t going to cut it any more.