The stuff on the walls at the Falafel Place looks like it came from a yard sale. You can picture any one of these paintings, prints, and posters leaning against a cardboard box full of old He-Man figures and Mr. Potato Head parts with a little orange sticker that says $5. One is a print of two happy geese. Another is a huge picture of elephants. There are a few landscapes and a few flowery prints in pink plastic frames. Here at " On the Cheap, " we don’t need ambiance. We don’t need mood lighting or exposed brick. And we think words like " minimalist " and " postmodern " are best reserved for museums and English class. Given the choice between yard-sale art and good eats for cheap, and restaurants with high-art atmosphere and prices to match, we’ll opt for the former every time.

So we opt for the Falafel Place, a Middle Eastern eatery on the outskirts of Kenmore Square. The chicken combo ($6.75) covers the standard Middle Eastern bases. You get generous helpings of chicken, hummus, baba ghanoosh, falafel, and salad. The chicken slices are crispy, charred, and tasty. Uniformly smooth mush describes a lot of hummus — but not here. This one has texture, and its garlicky bitterness is tempered with a murmur of lemon. The falafel is all that it should be: not overly oily, with a crispy outside and a softer inside cushion. The vegetables in the salad are remarkably fresh and juicy.

The Falafel Place offers a variety of rotating daily specials. On a recent Saturday evening, we were thrilled by the vegetable couscous ($3.99): a huge platter of couscous smothered with chunks of vegetables in a spicy, orange-colored sauce. Carrots and squash, among other indistinguishable shapes and flavors, gave the dish a decidedly autumnal feel. And if the spiciness got overpowering, the mild fluff of the couscous came to the rescue.

On to dessert, which proves a delicious value. The baklava ($2.50) is squeaky sweet. The peanut-butter baklava ($2.50) is a flower of paper-thin honeyed pastry petals centered around fudge-thick peanut butter. A slice of cappuccino cake ($2.25) stands six inches high. Almond flakes line the icing-backed edge. And the equally large, and even richer, Boston crème cake ($2.25) is moist, creamy, thick, sweet, and huge — all the adjectives that make a great dessert. Delivery is free. The hours are long. And the prices match the artwork that lines the walls.

The Falafel Place, located at 512 Park Drive, in Boston, is open daily, from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Call (617) 266-8120.