Adams Morgan Acquires Late-Night Jones for Falafel

Raed Alkhatib, a Palestinian immigrant who was raised in Jordan and sells roses in Adams Morgan, called the restaurant's falafel "as good as back home. This is the best."

The place is unquestionably and unapologetically quirky. No paper plates. No forks. Sandwiches are served on sandwich wrapping paper.

"I try to keep the trash down," said Bennett, noting that paper plates from the slice shops litter the streets nightly. "If you see Adams Morgan on Sunday morning, it looks like Chernobyl."

Environmental concerns aside, Bennett said, he also pitched the plates because some customers used them to devour the toppings as if they were part of an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

After a while, the forks vanished, too. Some customers, he said, piled on excess toppings, knowing that the towering delicacy could be tamed with a fork.

But the preventive measures haven't fazed regulars such as Catherine McAran, 24. One recent night, she piled toppings well above the rim of the pita, as if she were building a mini Mount St. Helens.

"Cathy gets her aerobic exercise when she builds her falafel," night manager Mike Dugan, 55, noted dryly.

Moments later, McAran produced a plastic fork lifted from a pizza slice shop on the way over.

"I do it all the time," she said. "I came in the week they opened. I have to eat it once a week. I'm addicted."

The pizza proprietors and their partisans aren't worried by the new competition.

"It hasn't affected us at all. My business is going up every day," said Jawed Khan, owner of Jumbo Slice Pizza on 18th Street NW. Khan, who has lived in Kuwait, has eaten at the falafel shop and said he's had better.

Shah Chishti, owner of Pizza Mart, which bills itself as the District's original home of the jumbo slice, has been there, too. Chishti said he liked what he tasted.