The best food in Amman is found at the secret, local places where the migrant population goes for the flavors and scents they miss most.
Amman is humble and dense, a dusty makeshift capital developed by necessity, not design, for the waves of migrants and refugees who’ve fled to Jordan through the centuries. Its eastern side is packed with lower-income Jordanians and refugees surviving in tiny sand-colored rooms stacked on top of each other; its western side hosts flocks of humanitarian workers who’ve come for those refugees, living alongside diplomats, foreigners and other elites. The two sides intersect in the balad, Jordan’s ancient downtown center and the heartbeat of Amman, with staircases running like arteries up to different neighborhoods, most of them centered on hills–thus the names Jabal (mountain) Amman, Jabal al-Weibdeh, Jabal al-Akhdar, Jabal Hussein, and so on.
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