Pankina: A Roman Table on the Corner of Gordon

The arancini arrive golden and audibly crisp, their shells shattering at the first press of a fork to reveal a molten core of risotto, mushroom, and mozzarella that stretches in slow threads between plate and mouth. A drizzle of tomato sauce pools beneath them, bright and barely sweet, and the scent of fried rice and aged cheese drifts across the small sidewalk terrace before the evening breeze carries it toward Dizengoff. At the next table, two women share a bottle of Vermentino and argue in Italian about whether the carbonara here is better than the one at Piperno in Rome. The owner, Shalom Zarrugh, passes by with a shy smile and a half bow, pausing just long enough to recommend a Sangiovese before disappearing back into the warm glow of the dining room. This is Pankina on a Thursday night: unhurried, deeply Italian, and entirely at ease with itself.

The kitchen at Pankina tells the story of three men who left the Jewish quarter of Rome to build something new in Tel Aviv. Chef Emanuele Di Porto brings more than thirty years of Italian kitchen experience to every plate; his partner Rami Fadlon previously opened La Taverna del Ghetto, the first kosher restaurant in Rome's historic Jewish quarter; and Shalom Zarrugh, who trained under Israeli chef Meir Adoni at Tadmor culinary school, holds the front of house together with a warmth that feels genuinely familial. Alberto Moscati, Shalom's cousin and the young head chef, now runs the daily kitchen operations.