A small shop / food buffet where they sell the best dish (of
sabich) in the universe.
Oved's shop (commonly referred to as simply 'Oved') is a place that sells sabich. It is located in 7th Sirkin St., in the city Givatayim (that's in Israel, you insensitive clod...). The shop is made of a small stand where Oved and his assistants sell the food, a small kitchen where the sabich is made and a very small area where folks can sit and eat (few people eat there, usually people take their pita and eat it at the street).
The reason that Oved's shop deserves a node (and a noble prize for food) is that it's one of the best places I've ever eaten in and is considered something of a cult in the Tel-Aviv area and even further than that. Oved has a very unique language and sale methods. Coming to think of it, the man is preparing food and acting a personal theater at the same time. His jargon is a subscript of Israeli Slang utilizing terms from the military world and the soccer world (don't ask me why). Sabich is a layered dish, made from many different components. Preparing / ordering a sabich has the following ceremonial steps, during which Oved asks the client what would he like in his sabich:
Greeting ("Ah, another veteran" or "a newcomer in the sector, let's go over the steps and soon your life will change as well"), adding hummus ("hummus catches?") choosing the amount of fried eggplants in the sabich ("eggplanting lightly, medium or With Great Force?"), adding a crushed egg ("eggify?"), adding salt/pepper ("saltify? pepperise?"), adding salad ("salad catches?"), adding tehina ("tehinification catches?"), adding pickled cucumbers / crushed onions / parsley ("picklify, onionize, parselize?") and, last but not least, the derby. During the derby, one chooses how many teaspoons of hot chilly sauce (maybe it's zhug, I'm not sure) or amba does one want in the sabich ("How much in the derby?").
These are the basic steps of ordering sabich. Because of Oved's (acted?) crazy/reckless behavior, and because he insists on the special language ("Here you will not only eat but also learn a language!") and because the food is so damn fresh and good, Oved's place attracts newcomers and veterans from everywhere in the country (Oved makes it a point to ask every newcomer for his residence - "Haifa? Ah, nice, nice, long range. About the best dish in the universe they have heard even in New-York!"). I've been eating at Oved's for quite a while now - sometimes as often as twice a week - and I have never seen that place empty, damn it. In fact, most of the time, there's a queue of 5-20 people waiting for their dish. Young and old, male and female, alone or in groups, it's amazing to see how diverse Oved's clients are. Roughly estimating, since Oved receives about 500 pitas in the morning and 700 pitas at night, since he's open 08:00 to 00:00 straight (the man is a crazy workhorse), since he sells every pita at 12NIS (~2.5$) and each one probably costs him less than 4NIS (~0.6$) - I estimate he earns about ~2000$ each day. The man is doubtlessly rich, and yet he works every day in a hard, boring, extremely tiring work (think 1x1 meters of movement space with 2 more people, and working near a large plate with simmering eggplants in the Israeli summer).
There are many combinations and "special moves" that have been invented around the dish. First and foremost, the derby is something of a special time in preparing the dish, because choosing your derby's score finishes the "game". Remember, the score determines how many goals (=teaspoons) of spicy sauce / amba you will have in your sabich. Oved calls the red spicy sauce Ha'Poel, and the yellowish thick amba Maccabi (both are Israeli soccer teams, of course). Oved keeps track of top scores in games (he does so in his head, just like he remembers the face of about 75% of his client and can tell off the top of his head if they're new or not, and remembers the exact way I like my dish just like he remembers lots of his hundreds of regular clients). At the time of this writing, the record which has been set about a month ago is 60/60 (yes, that's 60 teaspoons of spicy hot sauce and 60 teaspoons of amba), Oved testifies that "The guy ate it whole, and then went to take some large breaths of air near the tree there.". Personally, I've seen a colleague of mine eat 42:0 (Maccabi wins), eaten as a tribute to the answer in D. Adams' books (Yes, he took some large breaths of air near that tree too...). Other combos include "tomatization" (when adding salad, use mostly tomatoes), "sealing" (add a spoon of hummus atop the dish, after everything is done) and "crowning" (add a piece of fried eggplant atop the sealing hummus layer). Adding all three of the cucumbers/onions/parsley trio is called "running across the (soccer) field".
Oved tends to speak (only in "the language") to himself/his staff while preparing sabichs (well, given that he's always preparing sabich, at a rate of about 1.25 per minute, it's no wonder he speaks). Other slang pieces include:
"The Sector" - The shop itself.
"Shelling / Bombing" (as in Artillery) - Lots of clients, long queue.
"Stable Pitas" - Pitas with no holes, that can hold a sabich dish without leaking / tearing apart.
"Jams" (as in rifle jam) - When the crew around Oved doesn't work fast enough to give him the ingredients.
"Packing or immediate?" - Do you want your sabich in a plastic bag or are you eating it here?
"Completions?" - Any sabich dish you buy after the first one. Folks coming for completion get a slight edge in the queue when the sector is under heavy shelling.
"Susagize" - Add a sausage to the sabich. No one ever does this, don't do it either.
"Monitize" - Payment.
So if you ever drop by the Gush-Dan area (Tel-Aviv's surroundings)... You Know What To Do.