Ever-Expanding Pita Pocket Stuffed

Would all those fixings fit into that palm-plus-sized pocket of flexible flatbread?

“We’re gonna learn,” Eddie Eckhaus said, ​“right now.”

Eckhaus was crammed between spice and sauce bottles and pickled vegetable containers and the fryer in the narrow storefront kitchen of Lea’s Falafelhaus on Whalley Avenue across from Edge of the Woods Plaza.

Eckhaus honed his trademark falafel recipe there for more than a year as he has worked to open the take-out, delivery and catering shop to the public. Now he had finally opened — and was ready to perform the magic trick of stuffing what looked like three human stomachs’ worth of flavorful morsels into one $9.99 hand-held build-your-own sandwich.

He began by heating up the pita pocket. He revealed one clue to the sandwich’s expandability in the process: He uses spongy Jerusalem-style pita rather than the stiff cardboard American counterpart. 

While the pita warmed, he used a falafel press to scoop out three balls from his falafel mix, seasoned with turmeric, coriander, cumin and stuff-he-won’t‑reveal (for competitive reasons). The scoops plopped into boiling vegetable oil.

Arrayed beside the falafel tub were prepared sauces and containers of prepared vegetable sides.

“You start with the hummus,” Eckhaus said as he lined the inside bottom of the now-warmed pita with a schmear.

Next came a spoonful of Israeli salad (chopped tomato and cucumber). Then Eckhaus plopped the now-crisp falafel balls on top.

Caramelized eggplant followed. Then caramelized onions. Then caramelized cabbage with spices.

I sensed a theme here.

All that stuff seemed to disappear into a carbohydrate shell void, because a mess of roasted cauliflower mixed with cooked carrots and peppers fit in after that. Then pickles.

Now the last daylight was closing inside the pitaverse. Eckhaus dribbled in amba (pickled mango sauce), found room for sauerkraut, a touch more tahini to top.

And the deed was done.

“You definitely get your money’s worth,” Eckhaus proclaimed as he displayed the finished garbanzogavanza.

Eckhaus, who’s 49, was born in Israel; he grew up on Whalley in the Upper Westville/Amity neighborhood. He has cooked professionally (including at a deli he previously ran in West Haven) over the years in between working as an airplane and helicopter-parts courier. He moved last year into the Whalley storefront squeezed between MaMa Mary Soul Food and Perla’s Beauty Salon and put up his sign, naming the store after his daughter. He encountered a number of obstacles and delays in getting the business officially open; passersby benefited from free samples along the way as he perfected his recipe. 

Outside of egg salad and tuna, Eckhaus uses only plant-based ingredients in his dishes (i.e. no meat or dairy or other sea critters). Click here for the full menu, which includes sabich and egg salad and baba ganoush sandwiches, potato and ​“Big Turkish Mushroom” borekas, hand-cut and sweet potato fries; call 203 – 435-7950 to order. The restaurant is open Sundays through Thursdays 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Saturdays. (All of Eckhaus’s food is certified kosher and the business observes the Sabbath. He said he did not seek official rabbinic kosher supervision for the restaurant because of internal politics among religious authorities.)

Now that Eckhaus had proved how much he could fit into one pocket, one last question remained: Could all that fit into one stomach?

He handed me a stack of paper towels to find out.

The towels came in handy (though my eyeglasses did require de-smearing). And speaking of hands — you do need two hands to handle this falafel sandwich.

The work is worth it. The sandwich’s texture was exquisite: chewy pita complementing crunchy falafel balls with firm, tender roasted veggies bringing each bite home. The melange of sharp and mellow spices and sauces created a symphony of flavor that elevated Lea’s concoction to stratospheric sandwich heights.

It did all fit in one stomach. In fact, it took up satiated residence there for hours.

Eckhaus still had work to do on his soft opening: Assembling a series of signs conveying a single message in Arabic, Hebrew, Hausa, Russian, Polish to post out front. The sign’s multilingual message: ​“May peace prevail in the world.”

One sandwich at a time.

“This is what you’d get in Jerusalem, on both sides,” Eckhaus said of the style of falafel he serves in his newly opened shop. ​“Something in common. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on. It’s a peace falafel.”