Sabich is not short for 'salad, egg, more eggplant'; It is named after Sabich Halabi, an immigrant from Baghdad who tried to feed hungry bus drivers in Ramat Gan and accidentally created one of Israel’s most iconic street foodsTiki Golan|People can argue over who owns hummus, fight over the origins of falafel and keep debating whether Israel appropriated ptitim. But when it comes to sabich, there is only one person who could have claimed ownership of the dish, and his name was actually Sabich.The year was 1961. Ramat Gan was home to many immigrants from Iraq. On Uziel Street, near Bar-Ilan Garden, which still exists today, and the old Lili and Gal-Or movie theaters, Sabich Halabi, who immigrated to Israel from Baghdad in the 1950s, opened a small kiosk that would eventually become the first sabich stand in the world.GallerySabich Halabi (Photo: Courtesy)“We lost the right to make money from the name,” one of Halabi’s relatives told ynet this week, “but what hurts me more than the money is that people don’t believe my story. When I tell them the dish is named after Sabich Halabi, some people think I’m making it up.”The prehistoric roots of sabich go back to Iraq. The traditional Shabbat breakfast of Iraqi Jews was made up of many of the ingredients in what we now know as sabich, though back then it had the much less exciting name of “lafa with egg and eggplant.”Back in Ramat Gan, Halabi and his wife Rina initially sold soft drinks, candy, cigarettes and snacks to passersby from their small kiosk. But for the drivers of bus line 63, whose last stop was right next to the stand, that was not enough. They wanted a filling meal and asked the couple to bring food into the kiosk.Sabich remembered the Shabbat table of his childhood in an Iraqi home: brown eggs that had cooked overnight, eggplants fried in advance, boiled potatoes, hummus, amba, chopped salad and a handful of fresh herbs. Then, instead of serving everything on a plate, as was customary in Iraq, he packed all the ingredients into one pita. To him and his wife, it seemed like a simple, filling and easy-to-eat solution for tired and hungry bus drivers finishing their shifts. That is how, almost by accident, a classic was born.Sabich’s dish became a hit (Photo: Courtesy)Word of the bus drivers’ delicious meal spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted sabich, and a long line formed around the stand.Sabich himself had not planned to brand the dish with his own name. It simply happened. “People would stand in line and ask, ‘Make me a dish, Sabich.’ People on the side thought the dish itself was called sabich, and it became ‘a sabich dish,’” a relative explained. “If you ask any Iraqi who was born in Iraq what sabich is, he won’t know.”Over the years, different theories emerged claiming the name came from the Arabic word “sabah,” meaning morning, or that it was an acronym for “salad, egg, more eggplant.” None of them is true.Did Sabich understand that he had given the dish its name?