One Messy Sandwich

My friend Ellen told me about Maoz after her trip to Amsterdam and couldn't stop raving about it. She ate there six times, and when we looked it up online before my trip, discovered there were two locations in London. Today I wanted to cross at least one thing off my list, so off I went in search of it. When I finally found the place, I realized it was in a bit of a sketchy area - right across the street from a gay porn shop. A strip club was just round the corner. No thanks.

I decided to walk around the area - Picadilly Circus/Leicester Square - imagining I'd stumble upon the second location at some point, but not really knowing how. Then again, I'm lucky, so it would stand to reason that I would find Maoz eventually. And I did. After about 40 minutes of walking down darling little streets and browsing funky shops, I found the street right in front of my nose. Too bad this one was across the street from a store called Dirty White Boy. There were also sleus of jackhammers going off from construction workers right in front of another sex shop, so go on and make any analogies you'd like...I was starving so I went in anyway. The street, Old Compton, was actually quite darling with tons of little cafes and funky restaurants. Maoz is a falafel bar. You get white or wheat pita, freshly made falafel, hummus and fried eggplant and then you go to the salad bar and add whatever toppings you want. I had a delightful yogurt sauce, cilantro sauce and some parsley and lemon juice flecked couscous. It was a gigantic sandwich and I had the hardest time keeping it all in one piece, keeping it off the floor and my pants and keeping my face from being painted in it all. I took this picture, which made the people at the table next to me laugh, but I'm used to it. I take photos of my food all the time.