First making a name for itself as a food truck in Preston, Wazzup Falafel set up a permanent outpost earlier this year along High Street in Northcote – excellent news for lovers of the Palestinian-Jordanian outfit, now able to enjoy their famed falafels in the most extreme of Melbourne’s weather conditions.
Wazzup Falafel owner Ahmad Al Alaea swapped a career in fitness with cheffing after he couldn’t find equivalent falafels to what he’d enjoyed growing up in Jordan as a Palestinian refugee. Training with the best falafel chefs back in Jordan, he opened his food truck in the fateful month of March 2020, soon garnering an ardent following within a five kilometre-radius.
Thankfully, more people are now able to enjoy Wazzup Falafel’s fare. With a view of the kitchen where everything is made from scratch, the restaurant is sizeable without being huge and clad in warm timber – a perfectly cosy spot to enjoy a falafel or ten. The playfulness behind Wazzup Falafel’s name extends to its service – staff are smiley, jovial and only too happy to make recommendations on what you should order.
Falafels are unsurprisingly the name of the game here, but you get to decide how they’re served up to you – in a box alongside a medley of other ingredients, threaded on to a stick, atop piping hot chips in the self-fashioned ‘FSP’, slotted into wraps, swallowed by the folds of baked pita pockets.
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Melbourne who hasn’t ever tasted a falafel, but Wazzup’s are distinct from the manifold Levantine iterations. Small crisp oblongs of pillowy ground chickpeas (no fava beans to be found here) mixed in with fresh parsley and 21 different herbs that’ve made the journey from Palestine to Melbourne via Jordan, Wazzup’s falafels are light, fresh and multilayered. Because they’re so small, you also can’t stop eating them.
If you’re dining in a group, opt for one of the boxes where falafels arrive accompanied by the holy trinity of hummus, tahini and pickled vegetables. The ‘hot chilli’ on the side is one of the most exciting condiments going around – piquant with a lingering tartness, it imbues everything it touches with a pleasing heat.
Whatever you do, don’t go past the stuffed falafels and be sure to order one per person – you won’t want to share. Larger than the average falafel at Wazzup, it features layers of ground, soaked chickpeas sandwiched by sesame, red onion, red chilli flakes and sumac subsequently deep-fried into a flavour-filled ball of ingredients that work in perfect harmony with one another.
The musabbaha features an oily concoction of hummus mixed in with boiled whole chickpeas, diced green chillies and the ubiquitous yet closely guarded Wazzup Falafel special sauce – best scooped up with some pita.
Befitting its inner north location, everything at Wazzup Falafel is vegan, not that it’s fashioned itself that way – omnivores and plant-eaters alike flock there for a taste of the one-of-a-kind Palestinian-Jordanian falafel.
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