In search of the best falafels

Falafels are a common snack or street food primarily made of fava beans and/or chickpeas ground into mushy fried balls or patties that go into pita or laffa bread. The word falafel may refer to these or to the sandwich itself. Although the origins of the falafel are still unclear (Egypt? Lebanon? Israel?), this food has gone beyond the Middle East to be enjoyed in most parts of the world. 

Photo credit: Martin Rettenberger I Shutterstock

Free of meat, this filling snack can likely stand toe to toe with today’s innovative plant-based foods – all gaining popularity among vegans and health-conscious consumers. In fact, searches for 'falafel near me' have increased 50% worldwide in the past month*.

Wanting to know where the world’s best falafels can be found, foodie experts at 10bis.co.il  and their sister companies, embarked on their own research, the results of which they share. (Their complete methodology can be found at the end of this report.)

Is the best falafel found in your city?

The food experts ranked the world cities that can claim the tastiest falafels, on a score from 0 to 10. They based this on the number of falafel restaurants and the quality of the dish. You will find that 85 percent of the top 20 cities for falafel are in Europe. 

Topping the list of these European cities is Amsterdam, with 12 falafel restaurants per 100,000 inhabitants; second is Brussels with 33 restaurants (the highest of all places analysed); and Athens is at third. But overall, the best falafels are still made in the Middle East. 

It may not come as a surprise to many that Israel is the top country for falafels, but did you know that the local cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv are the top two best local sources for this dish? Haifa, which interestingly has few restaurants (9) offering this dish, came out as the city with the tastiest falafels of all, according to the research. Second runner-up, Tel Aviv has 13 falafel restaurants. The third position is claimed by Beirut and Jerusalem.  

Methodology for this survey

The foodie experts at 10bis.co.il were curious to investigate which world city boasts the best falafel by seeking to evaluate the density and quality of falafel in major metropolitan areas through the content analysis of 27 million reviews from a sample of over 450,000 restaurants located in 61 cities globally.

A full-text search was employed to identify mentions of ‘falafel’ along with its variations and translations within restaurant names, descriptions, and reviews to classify falafel serving restaurants. Importantly, to ensure that only restaurants with significant falafel notoriety are included, those restaurants with a falafel mention rate1 lower than 10% were omitted from the study.

The resulting dataset was aggregated to find the weighted average falafel review ratings and weighted average overall food rating for each city.

Subsequently, the most recent population estimates and land area for each city within the dataset was acquired from a multitude of sources including Eurostat, the U.S. Census and the World Bank among others.

Finally, the dataset was aggregated by city and a normalised rank was created based on the number of falafel restaurants per 100,000 inhabitants, the number of falafel restaurants per km2, the percentage of restaurants serving falafel, weighted average falafel review ratings and weighted average overall food ratings.

1 The falafel mention rate is the percentage of total reviews mentioning falafel for a given restaurant.

2 The review sample was collected from a reputable business directory during October 2021.

* According to Google Trends on 21/02/2022.

**All overall falafel scores were ranked from highest to lowest and rounded up to two decimal points.