Falafel b'Pita (פלאפל בפיתה), falafel in pita, is the classic format of the dish: a pita pocket stuffed with fried chickpea balls, chopped salad, pickles, and sauces. The angle is the pocket as a self-contained vessel. The pita does what a wrapper cannot, holding the whole assembly in a single hand-sized pouch where the layers mix as you eat, so the sandwich hinges on the pocket being fresh and supple enough to stuff full without tearing and on the falafel being fried to order so the balls hold up inside it.
The build is the reference falafel build and lives on the fry. The balls are soaked dried chickpeas ground with parsley, cilantro, onion, garlic, cumin, and coriander, fried in hot oil so a crisp shell sets over a moist, herb-green crumb. The pita is opened into a pocket, smeared inside with tahini, and packed: falafel first, then chopped Israeli salad, pickles, often fried eggplant or cabbage, with more tahini run through and s'chug or amba added to taste. The structural logic of the pocket is what makes the format work, since the bread contains the salad's liquid and the sauce instead of letting them run out. Done right, each bite pulls falafel, salad, pickle, and tahini together, the shell still crisp at the center of the pocket, the bread soft but intact and soaking just enough sauce to taste of the whole. Done wrong, the pita is stale and splits so the filling spills, the pocket is overstuffed and tears at the seam, or the balls have gone soft from sitting in the closed, steamy bread.
It varies by what is fried into the balls, by the salad and pickle choices, and by how hot the sauces run, each lever pushing the same pocket sharper or hotter. The laffa format is its closest sibling, the same falafel rolled in a larger flatbread for a bigger portion, and it is its own order deserving its own treatment, as are the named falafel variants such as the beet-red and sweet potato balls. What stays constant in the pita version is the core falafel demand met inside an intact pocket: freshly fried crisp balls and a fresh, supple pita, together good enough that the sandwich is complete without anything having to compensate.