The Best Restaurant in DC (and the 2nd Best Falafel in the World).

I know, I know.  Those are bold claims.  But they are both true (until I say otherwise).

Here's the thing: it is no secret that when I see a restaurant, food truck, concession stand, or questionable-looking man-in-a-van selling falafel, I must stop whatever I'm doing and try some.  It doesn’t matter if I’m not hungry, it doesn’t matter if I have zero money, it doesn't matter if I'm late on my first day of work at the US Embassy– my mind shifts into one-track ‘falafel mode’ and I must eat some or else.  So when Joe and I passed Amsterdam Falafel one morning in Adams Morgan – neither of us that hungry, as it was well before lunch – I turned to him and said, “I’m sorry, I have to.”

He understood.

And thank goodness he understood, because Amsterdam Falafel changed our lives that day.  That is to say, Amsterdam Falafel is now number two on my list of ‘top 3 falafel restaurants in the world.’  I can’t tell you how huge this is.  But I can tell you that we ate there again less than 24 hours later and loved it even more the second time.

Joe summed it up best when he said, mid-falafel-bite, “This is the kind of food that just makes you quiet.”

Do you know what he means?  I knew what he meant, mostly because neither he nor I had spoken a word since we’d started eating and we remained silent until a few minutes after we had finished eating, at which point the only words that did escape our lips were something to the effect of, “I want more.”

The reason it’s so amazing, I think, is that you order your pita and your falafel and then you choose your own toppings and fill the pita yourself.  It’s a buffet in the least buffet-est of ways; you simply walk along the toppings bar and add whatever filling you want to your pita (like chickpeas, or the eggplant – omg, the eggplant – as well as an assortment of other vegetables, hummus, tzatziki, baba ganoush, etc.), and then you have to get the "Dutch-style fries."  You have to.  They look really average, but I promise you: you need them.  Just trust me on this one.

Also, as customer service goes a long way with me, Amsterdam won me over big-time when the owner volunteered to print Joe’s and my boarding passes out for us.  We simply asked him if there was a store nearby that offered printing services so we could print our boarding passes (we had been planning on having our host, Joe’s old roommate, print them off for us until I realized that it’s 2015 and no one our age owns a printer), when he simply asked us to email the boarding passes directly to him, walked upstairs to his office, came back downstairs a minute later, and handed them to us.  He then proceeded to ask us all about our plans and wished us well on our grand European adventure. 

But in all honesty, he probably could have spat in our faces and repeatedly kicked us in the shins and I still would have deemed Amsterdam Falafel the second-best falafel I’ve ever had in my life.  It was just that good.

We are already planning our next trip to DC, in part because we love DC and we have a lot of friends there and in part because we need Amsterdam Falafel in our lives. 

Mostly the latter.  

And I see no shame in that.