On the dull backside of Nabil
Akheh’s food truck, behind the plain, Courier-type declaration “Middle Eastern
Food” at front, is a more telling sign. “King of Falafel,” it says in block
letters, and Akheh is willing to back that up.
“Some of those guys don’t use the
right oils. Nobody makes tahini,” he said, quietly disparaging some of the
other Middle Eastern food vendors.
Since opening his food truck in
1989, Akheh has used only imported ingredients picked up in New York; supplies
like chickpeas don’t come in through Philadelphia.
“I get them either from
Lebanon or Syria,” Akheh said. “You can get them from Canada, but those are not
so good.”
In his time, he has seen the price
of these imports inflate dramatically, from about $30 a case in the 1990s to
nearly $100 a case at the height of the recession and the imbroglio in the
Middle East. It has since leveled off at $55 a case, but Akheh remains wary.
At the age of 60, the youthful-looking Damascus-native has
put one son through pharmacy school and another one currently in law school, at
Temple University’s Beasley School of Law. That money comes from good times,
however; Akheh’s admitted this would not be possible in this economy.
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