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Middle Eastern food, some endlessly in decline (7)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

falafel

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'decline' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't see how they can define each other.

'middle eastern food some endlessly in' is the wordplay.
'middle eastern food' becomes 'fall' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'some' becomes 'a few' (I've seen this before).
'endlessly' means to remove the last letter.
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'afew' with its final letter taken off is 'afe'.
'fall' placed around 'afe' is 'FALAFEL'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for falafel that I've seen before include "Deep-fried ball of ground chickpea" , "food item" , "Middle Eastern deep-fried ball of chick-peas etc" , "Cake of ground chickpeas" , "vegetarian snack" .)

I've seen this clue in The Telegraph.
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