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It’s often hard to find a quality late-night meal in Nob Hill, much less one that’s not going to drive up the credit card bill. After a quick and desperate neighborhood walk to hunt down dinner ingredients, what should appear but Falafel Street Cafe, a new Middle Eastern kitchen, which had a solid line for 9:30 on a Tuesday night. In some ways, it felt like a lucky break.
The walkup window at the corner of Northwest 21st Avenue and Glisan Street is small—it takes up just a fraction of the space inside Silver Dollar Pizza Co—but its food options are mighty. For co-owner Adam Macbale, Falafel Street Cafe was a passion project born out of trying to share the Middle Eastern comfort food he grew up with with the world. (The Macbale family has owned Silver Dollar for about 20 years. Macbale’s father, Sam, owns Silver Dollar and co-owns Falafel Street Cafe.)
“For years, I was always like, ‘Dad, this food is amazing,’” Macbale says. “We need to be sharing this food instead, this is what we specialize in. He said, ‘Oh, you know, it’s nothing special, it’s just what I grew up eating.’”
But Macbale insisted that Portland’s dining scene had room for another high quality Middle Eastern eatery, and worked to build a no-frills menu that consistently delivers. Just take some of the sandwiches. The beef shish kebab ($14.42) is particularly enjoyable, where the sweetness of the grilled onion and peppers contrast well with savory, peppery kofta beef, creating the perfect bite. Then there’s the food stand’s namesake falafel wrap ($12.36), hand-rolled and fried on the spot, resulting in a crispy exterior with a soft, pillowy middle. It’s paired with homemade pickles, tomato and fresh lettuce. It was a bit pickle-heavy on multiple orders, with water from the vegetables making this a bit of a messy eat. If we could ask for anything, it’d be an extra piece of falafel in the wrap to balance the ratio. But it proved consistent across visits and in the cold winter nights has felt like holding a warm hug.
Falafel Street Cafe is Macbale’s attempt, he says, at playing a small part to reconnect people with the food he loves. It’s open early in the morning and late at night (often at or past midnight), bringing some spirit back into Nob Hill. The family’s presence in the Silver Dollar space has given Macbale a front-row seat to the slow drain of nightlife and community feel on 21st, especially in the years during and after the pandemic. He watched as late-night spots shuttered and people stopped venturing into the streets at night.
“It’s nice to have somebody who’s looking around and present and caring about the space a little more,” he says. “We want to be open early for people and we want to serve fresh, good food that we would eat ourselves, that we do eat ourselves.”
That strategy has paid off—Macbale and his dad also have a strong knack for pastries, stacking a strong case alongside those crafted sandwiches. These grab-and-go options are particularly appealing in the mornings with a cup of coffee. The spinach and za’atar pies ($5.15 each) are both good bites, golden pieces of pita bread topped with well-seasoned ingredients. The spinach pie boasted a pleasant lemony acidity, but the za’atar pie really stood out, especially for how the sumac’s tang contrasted with the sesame seeds’ nuttiness and olive oil’s earthiness.
But if you can only try one thing at Falafel Street Cafe, it should be the cheesy knafeh ($6.18), a traditional Lebanese dessert that plays with textures and flavors in a delightful way. The dessert uses kataifi, a dough that kind of resembles thin vermicelli noodles, and is filled with a sweet cheese before being baked to a golden brown and drenched in a sugar syrup. The cheese oozes out with the cut of a fork while the kataifi crackles around it, giving it an ever-satisfying cheese pull and a surprisingly enjoyable mouthfeel.
Across three different visits to Falafel Street Cafe, however, what stood out strongest was the constant, exciting energy surrounding the space. New customers regularly seemed to stumble across the space during our visits, fawning over the menu’s affordability and the stand’s late hours. The crowd of regulars is starting to turn the pop-up window into a reliable neighborhood hot spot, something the area desperately needs. Macbale’s family recipes are helping make the Alphabet District feel like home again, one falafel at a time.
TRY IT: Falafel Street Cafe, 501 NW 21st Ave., instagram.com/falafelstreetcafe. 7 am–midnight Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 7 am–10 pm Tuesday, 7 am–2 am Friday, 7:30 am–2 am Saturday, 7:30 am–10 pm Sunday.
