Falafel Past and Present

 Dinner Tonight

Falafel that Alice made from a recipe starting with dried chickpeas.

Eating Falafel

Falafel in Dearborn, Michigan, around 20 years ago
(from an earlier blog post).

Most famous falafel in Paris on Rue des Rosiers, the famous Jewish neighborhood for at least a century.

Israeli Falafel as I enjoyed it in Abu Gosh.

Lunch including falafel in Abu Gosh (near Jerusalem), 2018.

From 2016: Falafel (from Trader Joe's), a Turkish eggplant salad, and a cabbage salad with tahini dressing

Where Did Falafel Come From?

Many cultures claim Falafel as their own, often implying a very long history for the dish. Asconsumed today, its history isn’t really very long: one plausible theory is that it was invented in the late 19th century in Egypt at the request of British officers looking for a local version of Indian fried croquettes. In Israel in the mid-20th century, Jewish refugees from Yemen found a way to make a living by selling falafel as street food; thus, Israeli version of the dish is associated with Yemen although in fact it didn’t exist there, only later with the immigrant community.

Here’s one summary of the status of the dish in Israel, where I really got to know the dish:

“Consider falafel, Israel’s most popular fast food — as culturally synonymous with the country as burgers and fries are with the United States. Just as hamburgers are not technically an American invention (origin: Hamburg, Germany), falafel, deep-fried balls of fava beans or chickpeas, can be traced to India, where frying fritters made of chana dal was a common cooking practice, thought to have been brought west by Turkish or Arab traders.

“Another theory about the origins of falafel is that it was invented by Egyptians using fava beans, a vegetarian alternative to meat for Egypt’s Christian population to eat during Lent. Food historians speculate that when the dish migrated toward the Levant, the fava beans were replaced by the more common chickpea, which lends credence to the notion that falafel made of chickpeas may have roots in Jewish Yemenite cuisine.” (source)