Downtown Balad on an Empty Stomach

We meet by the Al-Husseini Mosque at seven, when Balad has stopped being an office district and started being dinner. Six stops, roughly two hours of eating, and no menus anywhere. Falafel at Hashem, eaten off paper on a plastic stool in an alley that has looked the same since the 1950s. Sujuk in a shopfront two metres wide. Tamarind juice poured from a brass urn by a man who will not slow down for your photograph. Fresh knafeh at Habibah, cut at the window, orange and dripping, eaten in ninety seconds because that is the only correct way. In between we walk the gold souk and the spice alley and talk about why Amman's downtown ended up squeezed onto a valley floor. Honest warning: this is street eating. You will stand for most of it, the seating is plastic where it exists at all, and the only toilets on the route are the mosque's - functional, not pleasant. Vegetarians eat extremely well here. Vegans should message us before booking, because the knafeh is the whole point and it is not negotiable.