Falafel Fellas

Our family is making falafels and Middle Eastern home-made food for 7 generations now. Our story is a story of a Jewish Arab family, that collected experience with food, cooking and Falafel while traveling all around the Middle East until some of us moved with this knowledge to Wellington, New Zealand.

The Falafel Fellas story began in 1792, when Judea Jabar was born in Teheran, Persia. Teheran was dominated by the Safavids from the 16th century, an era with cuisine rich in rice dishes. That is the origin of Fafafel Fellas’ Persian rice dish, consisting of chickpeas, carrots and spices(1). In 1859 the family decided to move to Palestine – they did it through Iraq(2) and stayed there for two years, absorbing the Iraqi culture and kitchen secrets. The Iraqi Falafel is green, made of chickpeas but with lots of parsley, coriander and other green herbs and veggies. Our family removed some ingredients like green peas and improved this traditional recipe with some spices and herbs. From Iraq the family continued to Damascus in Syria, riding on camels in a journey that took 40 days. During that time we learned how to prepare the Damascus Breakfast salad, that includes veggies mixed with eggs. After the eldest son Aslan was born, the family moved to Beirut, Lebanon – this is where David Mizrahi (meanign David from the east), the Falafel Fellas great grandfather, was born and raised(3). Our family memories of Beirut are quite bad, the family was very poor at that time, we had to feed 17 people with one salary. On the bright side we learned the recipe of the traditional Lebanese tahini sauce while there. In 1918, When David was 23 years old, he moved to Palestine with his youngest brother Mark and his parents that asked to end their life in Jerusalem – the plan was to do that 25 years before! The family travelled all around Israel and Palestine and lived in Jerusalem until 1921(4), the time when Moses and Esther died(5). That period of living in Israel & Palestine has exposed us to the Jerusalem Falafel and to the Gaza Falafel – quite similar types of herb rich falafels. It also influenced our old fashioned recipe of green Iraqi falafel, mentioned earlier. David then moved to Egypt – the central economic power of the time - passing through Gaza, the red sea and the newly dug Suez Canal. In Egypt he married the Falafel Fellas great grandmother – Blanche (meaning "The White”) Nanish, a beautiful French lady who was the daughter of a high ranked French military veteran, Jacques Nanish - he retired as a business man. David and Blanche had 4 children, the youngest of them is Caroline, the Falafel Fellas grandmother and probably the best cook from Cairo to Beirut. Great Nana Blanche and Great Grandfather David baked their own Pita bread, preparing their own Labane cheese and cooking falafel in a small kitchen that was smaller than the size of our Falafel Fellas food cart. Lucky for us, the family’s financing changed when Blanche won the first prize in Egypt’s lottery!
Being the only daughter of the family, Caroline inherited the family’s cooking secrets which transferred to Falafel Fellas. The family lived in Egypt until the 1952 revolution, during which they escaped for their lives to Israel through France(6). They left behind all their assets and real estate and settled in a refugee camp (7). From there part of the family moved to Wellington, New Zealand, taking with them the family traditions and cooking secrets that now build the Falafel Fellas menu. In Wellington we invented the Red Falafel, a falafel that includes a very popular New Zealand veggie – beetroot – basing this recipe on the traditional Middle Eastern falafel.