Warming Bowl · Chickpea Soup

Lablabi

📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Dan Counsell / Unsplash · Unsplash License

Tunisians traditionally eat this hearty soup for breakfast — it was built to warm workers up before dawn, not to close out a meal.

Chunks of stale bread are torn into a bowl and covered with a cumin- and garlic-spiced chickpea broth, then topped with a soft-poached or fried egg, capers, olives, and a spoonful of harissa. Street stalls and small hole-in-the-wall shops keep the broth simmering all morning, ladling it out to order and letting customers build their own toppings.

Why it's made this way: Lablabi started as a cheap, warming breakfast for laborers heading to work before sunrise, and the tradition of piling on whatever toppings are on hand — tuna, egg, olives, harissa — has turned a simple broth into one of Tunisia's most personalized street dishes.