Kofta b'Pita (קופתא בפיתה) is spiced ground meat shaped and grilled, then served inside a pita pocket, a close cousin of kebab in pita that the grind and the seasoning set slightly apart. The angle is what separates kofta from kebab on the same counter. Both are minced meat on or off a skewer, but kofta tends to carry a heavier, more aromatic spice load and is often shaped by hand into a thicker patty or torpedo rather than pressed thin along a flat skewer. The result is a denser, more strongly seasoned interior, so the sandwich hinges on that fuller spicing staying balanced and the thicker shape cooking through without drying its surface to a crust.
The build is the grill-house build with a more assertive hand on the seasoning. The meat is beef, lamb, or a mix, ground and worked with grated onion, chopped parsley or cilantro, and a deeper spice line: cumin, coriander, allspice, often paprika, and frequently a stronger reach for cinnamon, baharat, or chili than a plain kebab takes. The mix is kneaded to bind and shaped by hand, then grilled hot over coals so the outside chars while the inside, being thicker, has to be timed to cook through before the surface burns. The pita is warmed and slit into a pocket, often smeared inside with tahini, and the kofta is pushed in with the standard cast: chopped Israeli salad, pickles, more tahini, s'chug or amba for heat, fries often tucked alongside. Done right, the kofta is moist and deeply seasoned at the center, the spice aromatic rather than harsh, and the pocket holds it all without splitting. Done wrong, the thicker shape is charred outside and underdone or dry inside, the spicing is heavy enough to turn bitter, or the pita tears and the dense filling falls out.
It varies first by the meat and the spice profile, a lamb kofta heavy with baharat against a milder beef one, and second by the shape and the supports, a thick patty against a torpedo, a hotter or milder sauce load. The kebab-in-pita it sits beside is its closest sibling and reads differently mostly through the lighter spicing and the skewer shape, a separate sandwich deserving its own treatment rather than a footnote here, as is the laffa-rolled form. What stays constant in the pita version is the demand the heavier grind makes: a fresh supple pocket and a kofta cooked through and aromatic, the strong seasoning an asset the bread carries rather than a fault it has to mask.