We went looking for the Banzo food cart yesterday after work because My Darling B really really wanted falafel. The Banzo cart sells the best falafel we know of on the east side of town. Really the only falafel that we know of on the east side of town, but there you go.

The Banzo cart is usually parked somewhere downtown, but on Tuesday nights we can sometimes find it in the parking lot of the East Side Club, which is where we found it last night, but when we got there it was all closed up and stayed that way even though we hung around for five or ten minutes. B still wanted falafel, though, so we couldn’t just go home. That’s why we went looking for Banzo’s take-out store front on Sherman Avenue.

I went looking for the Banzo take-out store once before and couldn’t find it so I didn’t have much hope that we could do it this time around, but I didn’t want to go home without trying. Sherman Ave is practically all the way back to the part of town where I work, but just north of there along the train tracks. As we pulled onto the road I told B I’d look out one side of the car if she looked out the other.

“Is this Sherman Avenue?”

“Yeah, sure, of course it is.”

We went about a block before she said, “This is Fordem.” And you know what? It was.

I hung a left on the next cross street, because I knew that Sherman was on the west side of the tracks. Not only was Sherman the next street over, but I’d turned on the cross street that put us right on the corner where the Banzo take-away store was!

B ordered the Banzo platter and I ordered the F-Bomb, a spicier version of the platter B got, and with chicken, my favorite dish from Banzo. The F-bomb is two balls of falafel, rice with lentils, diced spicy chicken, a couple wedges of pita with a very generous dollop of hummus, and a salad. The Banzo platter is almost the same, but B got three or maybe even four balls of falafel, I forget. And we got an order of fries to eat in the car on the way home because we were literally starving!

One pleasant surprise: The platters from the take-away store are enormous! Compared to the take-away we’ve had from the cart before, I’m pretty sure there’s more hummus, rice and salad. Still just two falafel balls, but still the best falafel we can find.