ottawa foodies

If apples were falafel, the world would be a batter place.

Depends what kind you like I guess- I never knew how much they could vary until I moved here. I've never visited a country where falafel is traditional cuisine, so I'm not much of an authority, but I know what I personally like in a falafel.

Shawarma King: Weird weird weird. This is more like a spongy bread rather than any falafel that I am familiar with.

Shawarma City: Greasy!

Istanbouli: Closest to what I am familiar with. More chickpea-y and squishable/spreadable into your pita.

Les Grillades: Have not had their falafel, but all their other lebanese food is superior, so I'm anxious to try.

Well yes it's available all over the city including, as you mentioned, at mideast food centre. But I can't find a place that will cook it for you to order and when I do their mix is all over the board and too mealy.

I will say Glebe Café (run, I believe, by a palestinian fellow) makes a fine falafel but I am still in search. I understand Kamal's is still open?

go to Sandrellas on St. Laurent. They also have excellent meat pies.

Not sure what you are looking for here? Don't most Lebanese places have falafel? It doesn't really matter anyways because what I was going to say is that I saw some at the Middle Eastern Market on St Laurent on the weekend and they looked great! I didn't buy them as I won't be able to eat them this week, but they look great! Big and deep in color. I will try them next time I go back.

Do yourselves a favour. If you, like me, scorn all of the shwarma places for offering what they like to call "falafel" which is in fact some kind of fried &%(# made at 9am, with congeraled garlic $*%& on it and so on....

Go to Bread & Sons. They are doing real falafel sandwiches every Tuesday. They make the pita bread. They make the falafel mix from scratch. They fry them to order. And the sandwich comes with lots of little nugget sized balls instead of two dry and mealy footballs.

It was such a good falafel I'm now floating on a cloud of happiness.

John is from Lebanon if I am not mistaken. One thing I am most certainly not mistaken about is that his falafel is extremely yummy!

I got the sandwich at the Westboro Farmers Market ($9 -- a buck off Lansdowne!) and will agree with Stewtine that it could have used a little more flavour. Not that I want it to knock me over the head with salt and spices, but I want to get a bit more of a taste of what's inside than just texture (which is fantastic). Though we were offered some falafel to sample while in line, and the flavour on that came through just fine .. excellent texture and well-seasoned.

The made-to-order pita was the real highlight of the sandwich. Flattened dough puck put on the stone and baked before our eyes. I could eat about 10 of those alone..

Good sandwich on the whole.

The saj and falafel are both excellent texturally. Unfortunately the sandwich really was tasteless and lacked seasoning. Even the pickled elements were hardly noticable. Just a bit of salt would really change this sandwich. Also $10 at the landsdowne market.