Foul shops bustling with customers

These tiny shops that prepare and sell barely anything but “foul-tameez” are bustling with customers, both Saudi and expatriate, in the late afternoon daily since the start of the fasting month of Ramadan. A fabulous ethnic dish in Saudi Arabia for breaking the daylong fast, the meal consists of meshed fava beans and a wonderful flatbread known as tameez. Billed as the “poor man’s breakfast”, a meal that can easily serve three to four people costs as little as SR3. The foul is slow cooked in a huge balloon-shaped metal pot tilted over a charcoal burner. A spoon with a long handle is used to stir the beans and scoop out the golden color dish through the small mouth of the pot. The tameez is baked in a huge igloo-shaped oven. Long instruments are needed to flip and retrieve the bread, which is often the size of a large pizza. Depending on the country of the maker, the tameez can vary in size, consistency and flavor.