In many towns throughout Italy, especially in Naples, you can wander around for hours on end looking for junk food and not find any. The only street food you will encounter will be pizza and it too is baked according to tradition with products that pay homage to local agriculture. Italian mothers will occasionally take care to take their children to enjoy this wonderful dish, knowing that they are actually giving them a nutritious dose of carbohydrates, proteins and vegetables.
Between those green towns and HaRakevet Street in Tel Aviv, at the point where the Allenby station of the light rail is located, thousands of kilometers are separated and a conceptual angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. Still, we managed to find pizza here that reminds us of those districts.
PPP Pizza
The impression is misleading. The small PPP pizza stand, with a metal shutter separating it from the street and opening for the evening, is decorated with graffiti sprays in bright pink. Countless passersby walk around the wide sidewalk of the revitalized area, including local beggars. Opposite are individual tables and chairs and pink milk boxes, from those that have stayed with us since the Corona period. But as soon as you exit the entrance to the subway station opposite, a good smell of baking and cheese blends in with the main street. The pizzeria was founded by entrepreneurs Tal Bodenstein, Assaf Taglicht (Loveat, Kuli Alma, Cafe Barzilai) and Daniel Tziporoha.
It's "modern Neapolitan pizza," Tziporoha explains to us, and is precise. Vern Cohen, the local chef, explains: "Our pizza is a little more Israeli and crispy. We understood that we wanted to bring high class Naples to the street, but we adapted the pizza here. Even for those who come home at night from the clubs."
Pizza with mushroom mix and arugula, photo: Ran Golani
So after many leg classes in Italy, in order to bring some of Italy's dough to this small stand, the founders of the place brought to Israel, Litralli, a 42-year-old sourdough and the chef Pizziolo, Eugenio Visantin, from the Veneto region in northern Italy. Visentin leads LaloPace - an Italian pizzeria that specializes in quality dough as a base for unusual combinations.
The spices from the market, the sourdough from Italy
For two weeks during the Iron Sword War, he stayed with Cohen in Israel until they reached the desired taste and texture. "Classic Neapolitan is made from flour 00 in a stone oven at 450 degrees Celsius. We have a professional and modern oven that we brought from Italy, we lowered the heat by a hundred degrees and created an interesting dough with the special sourdough and a mix of flours with more whole parts of the wheat," explains Cohen. "It gives a lot of deep flavors and a little bit of the feeling of bread."
More Israeli and crispy, photo: Ran Golani
We tasted. On the table were small coconuts - one with dried fresh oregano leaves and the other with shredded chili. First a classic margarita pizza was placed on it (15 NIS per triangle, 60 NIS per tray). It's a thin, slightly crispy dough on the bottom with thick, soft edges, full of air bubbles on the inside and with a pretty crackling crust on the outside. The tomato sauce was rich, juicy and somewhat sour. Quality cheese from an Israeli farm was placed on it that was stretched in the mouth. The pizza was sprinkled with fresh oregano leaves that had been dried. They gave aroma and their taste added greatly to the dish. "We found them at Levinsky Market," Cohen told us. Another excellent pizza we tasted was an ancient classic pizza used in the region of Sicily "Pizza Conseca". Her tomato sauce was cooked and seasoned with garlic, and the cheese mixture flavor on it was more intense and combined with pecorino.
We also tasted pizza with pesto sauce, which surprised us a lot, because in addition to basil, cooked celery and coriander were also incorporated into it. To us, they made an association with Persian cuisine and again took us for a moment to the nearby Levinsky Market. On this pizza were placed halved cherry tomatoes, an obvious combination. The place offers additional intriguing combinations such as pizza with mushroom mix topped with rocket leaves (20 NIS for a triangle, 80 NIS for a tray), or a creamy white pizza with cauliflower, gorgonzola cheese and chives (20 NIS for a triangle, 80 NIS for a tray).
So we sat in the heart of this bustling intersection (who imagined), which until recently was surrounded by NTA checkpoints for the construction of the light rail, ate good pizza and thought about how time passes and reality changes.
Mikve Israel 10, Tel Aviv
Sunday to Saturday from 18:00 to midnight
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