Eating complicated dishes can be nice, but you won’t be tempted eating it every day. A simple dish however you are able to eat over and over again… a great example of a dish like this is hummus. I could eat hummus every day all the time, and if it weren’t for my wife stopping me I would 🙂 (so when she’s not there I do, I know I’m a rebel 😉 ) . I know I say simple which it is, but making a good hummus isn’t as simple as it might look. It does only contain a few ingredients, but still you will never be able to make it taste like the real Middle Eastern hummus. An option would indeed be buying it in the supermarket, but there again it still doesn’t taste the same. For me the spots to buy it is in a real Lebanese restaurant/shop, Israelian eatery or at an open air market at a Middle Eastern shop …In Antwerp the perfect place to get it (and even eat it) is at ‘Chickpea’  a so called hummus bar :-).

The story behind this place is quite unique, the owner/cook (aka Yossi Israël) is a former jeweler who decided a year ago to  leave gold and diamonds for what they are and have a little career change and start working with another kind of jewel aka chickpea 🙂 Using old family recipes that have been used for generations and generations you can only imagine how wonderful this hummus tastes. If he made his jewels like he now makes hummus, those must have been some beautiful jewels 🙂

Chickpea is without any doubt THE best place to have hummus, pimped hummus (with lam stew, shrimps…) or hummus related dishes like falafel in Antwerp. Their eatery might be small, but the taste of their food makes  it big… it may have been the hot temperatures, but I felt on holiday sitting on their terrace, sipping from my home-made lemonade and making my plate of hummus emptier with the help of a warm pita bread 🙂 (am I making you picture it 😉 ) Once you tried their hummus you won’t want anything else anymore. Thank god for Take away 🙂

Chickpea

Address: Oudaan 4, 2000 Antwerp – Belgium

Website: www.chickpea.be