[URBAN NOTE] Falafel House

[rfmcdonald]

Falafel House (717 Yonge Street) could stand in well for the first generation of "ethnic" restaurants in Toronto, with a sparse decor enlivened only by mirrored walls, a cafeteria-style layout complete with those plastic trays, and menus written in the cutting-edge block fonts of the 1980s. I still keep going back, though, and not only because it's conveniently just south of the Bloor-Yonge TTC station. There's something about the ambiance of early-multicultural Toronto that I like, something cheerful and naïve. Perhaps it's displaced nostalgia for the Trudeau era, perhaps it's because last night I overheard a customer asking a server what the Greek name for falafel was, perhaps it's simply because it's good cheap filling food in pleasantly large quantities.