Sabich

Sabich is the breakfast of Iraqi Jews, transplanted whole to Israel. In Baghdad, Iraqi-Jewish families traditionally ate a Saturday morning meal of fried eggplant, slow-cooked beitzah haminados (long-baked brown eggs), boiled potato, and salads, items prepared on Friday because cooking was forbidden on Shabbat. When the great wave of Iraqi-Jewish immigration arrived in Israel between 1950 and 1952, the dish came with them. In the 1960s, an immigrant named Sabich Halabi (or, by some accounts, the dish itself was named with the acronym S.B.I.Ch. for its core ingredients: salat, beitzah, yontz, chatzilim) opened a stand in Ramat Gan that served all the elements stuffed into a pita. The portable version exploded in popularity through the 1980s and 1990s, eventually rivaling falafel as Israel's most popular street food. Tel Aviv now has shrines like Sabich Frishman and Sabich Tchernichovsky where the morning queue stretches down the block.