Falafel: A recipe
for connection
Radio 4 | ★★★✩✩
Reviewed by Josh Howie

I honestly don’t know when a programme last made me so tense. The opening monologue, with its talk of the “displacement of people”, potential to “tear us apart”, and “from Cairo to Melbourne”, isn’t auspicious.

Then as the first third continues, with its mentions of Palestine…Syria…Lebanon…Sudan…Egypt…I’m white-knuckling my grip on the table. They’re really going to do it aren’t they? They’re actually going to erase Israel from this Radio 4 food documentary Falafel: A recipe for connection. I don’t believe it. Do I really have to grab my family and go protest outside the BBC again?

I start googling the presenter Leyla Kazim. What’s her background? What’s her agenda? Did she tweet in support of Corbyn? Which is all quite tricky to do as another feeling enters the mix: hunger. As someone describes the perfect falafel, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, all the talk of tahini transports me to thirty years ago in the Old City of Jerusalem where my addiction began.

Maybe I should quickly press pause and check out what the UberEats options are. Is 10am too early for a falafel?

Far from being a foodie, this examination of the seemingly simple street food works at the very least as a reappraisal of the myriad ways its elements combine to create something larger than themselves.

As to the stated aims to explore the falafel’s history, meaning, and answer whether a food can be authentic to any one place, it’s not quite as successful. My grip on the table top certainly lessens though once one of the founders of Honey & Co, restaurants inspired by Yemeni, *cough* Israel *cough*, and Egyptian cuisine, is introduced.

Israeli restauranteur Itamar Srulovich tactfully and finally raises the centrality of the dish as a core part of his national identity and dances around the ‘controversy.’ There’s talk of cultural meaning and power differences, but the reality is that the falafel is just one more tool that Palestinian activists use to try attack Israel. Although essentially pretty much everyone in the region tries to claim the falafel as their own, it would’ve been good to state a few more facts about its origins, namely that they’re a relatively recent creation, certainly in modern form.

Commonly thought to originate from 4th century Coptic Egyptians, felafel doesn’t appear in any written sources until just over a century ago, which makes sense as frying oil would’ve been prohibitive before, pitta bread pockets were introduced around then by European bakers, and even the tomato wasn’t about.

But instead of facts, there’s a lot of wishy-washy well-meaning talk of bringing people together as it’s loved by all. It’s a nice sentiment, and Leyla Kazim is an empathic and good natured guide with an obvious passion for food and people. But whilst I appreciate her deft diving into such a contentious area, when it comes to this delicious vegetarian dish, I wish there’d been a bit more meat.