4 places to eat (and drink) in Amman

 

Sugarcane juice

I saw several juice kiosks/stands in the streets of downtown Amman that sell freshly squeezed sugar cane juice. I’m not sure if they’re there all year round, but the one we frequented always had a crowd and was hard to miss (not far from the legendary Habibah Sweets). It’s cold, sweet, refreshing, vitalising and so tasty! 1/2JD a cup.

 

Habibah Sweets

They sell freshly made local sweets, kanafeh, a cheese pastry soaked in syrup. The downtown branch is in the alley next to the big Arab Bank building. People will be queuing and eating outside this small hole in the wall place, so should be easy to spot. You need to first buy a ticket at the booth outside the shop, then go inside, hand the ticket to the person behind the counter and they will give you your order. We joined the queue, but the menu was in Arabic, so we asked other customer who just came out of the shop what he was having. ‘They have two different types,’ the man said. ‘Just ask for half and half and you’ll get one of each’.

A slice of kanafeh appeared to be 0.7JD. We paid 1.4JD for our ‘half and half’ and got two slices of kanafehs, one of each types. I preferred the one with shredded pastry on top, the crunchy pastry counter balanced sweetness of the syrup and creaminess of the cheese.

Beside Al Bank Al Arabi Downtown, Amman 

http://habibahsweets.com/en/Default.aspx

 

Hashem Restaurant

They’re located in downtown Amman and serve tasty and affordable local food and appears very popular and well known. At the same time, it is a no-frills, straight talking and a bit rough around the edges restaurant where the pace is fast and many locals go as well as tourists. They do not have a menu, our waiter said that we could get a ‘mix’; falafels, hummus, ful and chips to share.

Everything was so tasty, clean honest food, and absolutely enough. Later, we realised they also had stuffed falafels and moutabel, but I don’t think we could eat more then what we had! We also got a glass of tea each and our total bill came to 6JD.

Al-Amir Mohammed St Downtown, Amman

Al-Quds

They do one thing only, toasted falafel sandwich, and they do it well. Their falafels are freshly made at the shop front. They have two different buns, a crusty sesame bread and a soft bread that is a little sweeter and smaller in size. The sesame bread sandwich was 0.75JD, the smaller soft bread was a little cheaper. When you order, they will also ask if you want your sandwich spicy. I went for spicy, but the sauce was more salty than spicy to me. They only had one bench outside the shop. We sat and ate our first sandwich and when we finished, we went back to get another one! There also were public benches just across the street from the shop.

They must be so popular, people just kept coming and going. It was a simple food made well and with care. It was tasty, fun, comforting and satisfying. I’m glad I tried both sesame and soft bread, different bread gave different texture and flavour but both were equally good.

Al-Rainbow Street, Amman