Falafel Mana (פלאפל מנה) is the falafel portion served as a plate rather than stuffed into bread: a pile of fried balls with pita on the side, salads and sauces around them, eaten by dipping and tearing rather than by holding a sandwich. The angle is the same chickpea ball in a different format, and the format changes what matters. With nothing wrapped around it, the falafel has nowhere to hide, so the plate hinges almost entirely on the quality and freshness of the fry, with the bread demoted to a utensil and a vehicle for sauce.
The build is a deconstruction of the pita rather than a different recipe. The same chickpea mix, ground with parsley, garlic, cumin and coriander, is fried fresh and small and mounded on the plate while the shells are still crackling. Around them go the components that would otherwise be packed into a pocket: a smear or pool of hummus, a generous run of tahini, chopped Israeli salad of tomato, cucumber and onion, pickled vegetables, sometimes s'chug or amba for heat and tang. Fresh soft pita comes alongside, often warmed, to be torn and used to scoop hummus and pick up the falafel. Done right, the plate is a clean showcase: the falafel hot and crisp with a green moist center, the hummus smooth and warm, the salad sharp, each element good enough to stand alone and better together when dragged through with bread. Done wrong, the falafel is fried ahead and sits going soft and greasy on the plate, the hummus is cold and stiff, or the whole thing is under-sauced so the bread has nothing to carry and the balls eat dry.
It varies mostly by what fills the plate around the core and by whether it is built as a light portion or a full meal. Some versions are spare, just falafel, hummus, salad and bread; others come closer to a mezze spread with fried eggplant, fries, more pickles and several sauces. The eater controls the assembly entirely, since each scoop is built by hand at the table rather than packed by the counter. The stuffed falafel ragil pita is the obvious sibling, the same parts wrapped instead of plated, and a hummus plate topped with falafel is an adjacent form that shifts the emphasis from the ball to the paste. Those deserve their own treatment rather than a footnote here, but they all return to the same idea: fresh-fried falafel and good bread with a few honest sides, here laid out openly so the fry has to carry the dish on its own.