Falafel Express

While browsing through this amazing food-loving city of Ahmedabad, we happened to stumbled upon this small maroon coloured place, situated near Vijay Cross Roads, Navrangpura, named Falafel Express. Being one of the few places to sell the authentic lebanese delicacies, we definitely wanted to try this place out.

As we entered the place, we were a little startled to find that it was entirely empty. Being a sunday afternoon, food-zombie-ahmedavadis definitely flock places like these. Anyways, we entered and started to browse the menu. Good thing that I did some R&D on Lebanese Delicacies the other day, which helped me to browse through the menu and show it off to my friends. I helped them to order a Falafel in Pita - Traditional and an Onion and Roasted Red Peppers Pizza with Mozzarella Cheese.

The pizza arrived first and to our surprise it had a thin pita base instead of a the traditional bread base. It was a turn off as no where it was mentioned about the base being of pita. The pizza was fine but there was nothing special about it. It was topped with Falafels Secret Sauce, veggies and olives and a fair amount of mozzarella cheese. But all our despair was lost, when the waiter handed us our Falafel in Pita - Traditional. It was beautifully wrapped and served with a pickled chilly. The falafel was long and was overloaded with stuffings. Without any delay, I took a big bite of it. And the despair was back again. The falafel looked all beautiful and attractive, but was very bland and tasteless. Even the falafel balls in the wrap didn't give a distinct taste of beans. All we could taste was bland humus. We thought we had ordered something mild, hence we ordered Falafel in Pita Spicy Garlic Sauce, just to get the spicy feel of falafel, but the taste was the same with a dash of spicy garlic.

When leaving the place, we were a bit disappointed with the food out there. But again, maybe thats the way the arabians and the lebanese like their food. What say folks? Any Arabic folks reading my blog?

Qwiches

Last month one of my friends celebrated his birthday. And as usual, I had forgotten to plan a treat for him. So, we three friends dropped at his place with a cake and wished him. There we planned where we would hangout and thus ended up going to Qwiches. Now, I had heard a lot about Qwiches from my cousins and friends, but couldn't get a chance to go there. So that day my dream came true. Qwiches is basically a sandwich joint, situated on University Road, just a little ahead of Vijay Cross Roads.

The moment we reached there, we were astonished by the number of vehicles in front of the eatery and thought it was a bad idea to get in as it would be overcrowded. But as we went through the simple looking entrance of a residential building, we were amazed. Wow! It was like we stepped in a totally different dimension. We made our way through the eatery and went upstairs through a metal staircase as the lower floor was already occupied. Still in awe of the interior, we saw young crowd enjoying themselves in a vintage setup.

After deciding to finally place the order, we went to the counter, near the entrance, to order some subs and coke. But the personnel at the counter was kind enough to introduce us to some offers. Thus we ended up ordering a vegetable hummus sub, chilli cheese open sub, sprouted salad and some refreshing drinks. Once our order was placed and the payments were done, we were handed a small round thing, which looked like a disk-man. My friends said, it would light up when our order would be ready which reduced long queue and no cluttering up of customers near the counter. Impressed with the funda, we went back to our seat and started chatting about love, life and other things. Suddenly, the lights of the disk-man illuminated and it started to vibrate. All of us were astonished and excited that our order was ready in no time. When we went to the counter our order was ready. We took our tray with all the delicious looking food and went to our seats. The chilly cheese open sub looked the most delicious, as it was topped with cheese and other veggies. It was really delicious and was the best thing we had at qwiches. The next thing we had was vegetable hummus sub. Hummus is basically a paste made of chick peas and olive oil. It is a very popular delicacy of the middle east. It also had some tomatoes and cucumber in it. The veggies here had overpowered the taste of the sub making it difficult for us to notice the taste of the hummus. But it did give us some idea of the Arabian delicacy.

We continued to hog and take in the ambience of the place. We saw many college groups and couples there, giving a very youthful vibe to this place. It's indeed an awesome place to lock out the world and spend some quality time with your friends and loved ones. I strongly recommend this place to all who have a young heart and a growling tummy.

Image Courtesy: Keyur Panchal (KPhotography)