I was in the Union Square area for an appointment and decided to stop by Rainbow Falafel for lunch. They are in a tiny storefront with no seats on 17th St, a few stores in from Union Square. We made them a member of our Honorary Street Food category in 2010, and wanted to check in again to see if things had changed.
Rainbow Falafel has excellent falafel, but they also have a big spit of chicken roasting behind the counter used for making chicken shawarma. That was Today’s Lunch, and it cost $5.75.
I don’t often get dessert with lunch, but Rainbow Falafel has several types of fresh Middle Eastern pastries for sale that looked great. The Bird’s Nest ($3) looked tasty, so I got one for after lunch.
I’m taking a break from meat again today (nothing to do with religion) and decided to get a falafel sandwich from Rainbow Falafel & Shawarma at 26A East 17th St, between Union Square West and 5th Ave. There’s currently scaffolding around the building, but they are open for business.
Rainbow Falafel is a storefront with no seating that has been around for a long time, which puts it in our Honorary Street Food category. There is often a line out the door around lunchtime, but I was there a little early today, so only 3 people were ahead of me.
I regularly get their chicken shawarma sandwich, which is really good, but I’ve been eating a lot lately, and wanted to bring it down a notch in terms of food volume eaten at lunch. Their desserts are also really fresh and good, which made that last sentence especially tough to follow.
As with most falafel sandwiches, the lettuce, tomato, tahini sauce and hot sauce were on top and the falafel balls were on the bottom, but when I got to the falafel balls, there were still plenty of toppings to flavor them. They don’t do the pickle on top like Moshe’s Falafel does, but it had plenty of sauce, some heat, and was pretty stuffed. Their tahini sauce added a nice sesame flavor, too.
I don’t usually get dessert with lunch, but their desserts are very hard to resist: baklava, bird’s nests, honey cakes, date cookies, ladyfingers, and butter cookies plain or with fillings. I chose the butter cookie with raspberry jam in the shape of a star. It was very buttery, with the raspberry jam a perfect companion to the butter cookie.
Today’s Lunch was a 9 out of 10. They lose a little for no pickle, but they are Syrian, not Israeli, so it’s their local version. The sandwich was excellent, although the pita started falling apart at the end. The dessert certainly added some points. Next time, I’ll write up their chicken shawarma, which I’ve had before and really like, but haven’t written about yet.
There are great places to get street food that are not trucks or carts. I’m starting a new section called Honorary Street Food for storefronts with little or no seating that serve food considered to be street food. We want to support all street food vendors, whether they serve from a truck, a cart, or a tiny storefront.
Please send me your favorites so they can be included here.
