Ethnic Eats – Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver

A tiny, but crazy-busy shawarma place on Robson Street, Falafel Maison is great destination for a quick, healthy downtown lunch. The lineup is often out the door at lunch, but they have an efficient system down and it rarely takes long to cycle back out again, along with a smile and a kind word.  That’s the benefit of a family-run business and there aren’t very many left downtown anymore. As I mentioned, the shop is tiny. There are only a few seats with a couple more outside, but the majority of customers don’t stay in anyways.

The Falafel sandwich is great for $4.75 but the Shawarma sandwich is even better for $5.75. Both have hummous, yogurt, lettuce, hot sauce (if you want it), and tabbouleh wrapped up in a pita and while the basic taste is pretty similar, the falafels are soft and flavourful without being greasy and the shaved chicken in the shawarma is marinated to perfect tanginess. Then there are also other ways of plating the same items, i.e. – Shawarma on a plate ($6.25) with salad and rice, etc. Wrapped up in paper is the way to go in my opinion, but the portions are generous regardless and they’re happy to pack up whatever you order.

It’s cash only, but the owners seem very forgiving (another yay for family-run). Today when I was there the customer in front of me managed to miss all 3 of the “CASH ONLY” signs and they just told him to pay next time. Nice.

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Falafel Maison

516 Robson Street, Vancouver