In Levinsky Market, where spice-scented air mingles with the aroma of fresh-baked pastry, three bourekas bakeries tell overlapping stories of immigration, adaptation, and the stubborn preservation of culinary tradition. Walk the market’s pedestrianized stretch and you’ll encounter rival loyalists – some swearing by Penso, others by “Ima,” and a dedicated crowd who’ve remained faithful to Puni for generations.
Penso: The Istanbul Legacy
At 43 Levinsky Street, Bourekas Penso has held its corner since 1965, when Yeshayahu Penso brought his family’s Istanbul bourekas recipe to Tel Aviv. The Penso family’s fame in Turkey’s old quarters preceded them—ask the elders in Istanbul’s Jewish neighborhoods about the best bourekas they ever tasted, and they’ll likely mention Penso, specifically their bourekas filled with Bulgarian cheese and kashkaval.
That Istanbul pedigree shows in every detail. Penso’s bourekas are exercises in Turkish precision: thin phyllo dough rolled by hand each morning, creating those characteristic crispy layers that shatter at first bite. The fillings remain traditional—sharp kashkaval cheese, earthy spinach and feta, spiced potato, sautéed mushrooms, and a newer addition of eggplant with cheese. But it’s the technique that matters: each boureka brushed with egg wash until it gleams, topped with sesame seeds that toast to nutty fragrance.
The bakery offers both large spiral bourekas in the traditional Turkish style and smaller versions for those eating on the go. They come with the full traditional accompaniment: slow-cooked haminados eggs (browned for hours in the oven), grated fresh tomatoes, pickles, olives, and the option of ayran—that refreshing Turkish yogurt drink that cuts through the richness of the pastry.
After nearly eighty years, Penso remains under family management, now run by the fourth generation. The queue that forms on Friday mornings speaks to the bakery’s enduring appeal, locals who’ve been coming here for decades standing alongside tourists clutching guidebooks.
Bourekas Shel Ima: The Levinsky Standard
Just down the street at number 46 sits Penso’s great rival: Bourekas Shel Ima (Mom’s Bourekas), also known simply as Bourekas Levinsky. The bakery’s origins trace to the 1950s, when it opened as a partnership. Eventually the partners split—one stayed and kept the original location, while the other opened Burekas MeIma on King George Street.
The name “Ima” (mother) isn’t incidental marketing. These bourekas have that homemade quality, the kind that suggests someone’s grandmother is in the back room rolling dough. The phyllo here is remarkably thin, made without margarine, creating a delicate crispness. The fillings are generous: cheese, spinach, potato, or the popular combination of spinach and cheese.
What sets Ima apart is the texture. The dough here is distinctly crispy on the outside while remaining tender within, achieving that balance that separates exceptional bourekas from merely good ones. The spiral-shaped pastries arrive cut into manageable pieces, served with the same traditional accompaniments as Penso: hard-boiled egg, grated tomato, pickles, olives, and hot sauce.
The rivalry between Penso and Ima has become part of Levinsky lore. A television segment once attempted to adjudicate between them, though comparing different fillings (spinach-cheese versus eggplant) struck many as fundamentally unfair. The truth is both are excellent, with slight differences in dough texture and filling generosity that inspire fierce loyalty in their respective devotees.
Puni: The Polish Adaptation
The story of Puni Bakery is one of adaptation – of immigrants learning to speak their new neighbors’ culinary language. In the early 1920s, Avraham and Proma Puni arrived from Poland and opened a small bread bakery in Jaffa. After the 1929 riots, they relocated to the newly developing Florentin neighborhood, where they found themselves surrounded by Balkan immigrants – Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians.
To fit into this community, to give their new neighbors a “taste of home,” the Punis began making bourekas. Here was a Polish-Jewish family learning to produce a Turkish-Balkan pastry in order to connect with a Greek-speaking clientele. The bourekas secret has remained in the family for over a century now, passed down through generations.
Puni’s approach differs from both Penso and Ima in one crucial respect: they use olive oil instead of butter or margarine, creating a lighter, less heavy pastry. The bakery sits at 24 HaAliya Street (corner of Matalon), and offers an extensive range of fillings – from traditional Bulgarian cheese, kashkaval, spinach, and potato to mushrooms, eggplant, and various vegan options including a popular spinach boureka made without dairy.
The Puni bourekas are known for being particularly crispy and brown on the outside, with generous fillings. Like their competitors, they offer both dairy and vegan versions, frozen bourekas for home baking, and the full complement of traditional accompaniments.
The Cultural Geography of Bourekas
Together, these three bakeries map different streams of Jewish immigration to Palestine and Israel. Penso represents the direct line from Ottoman Istanbul, carrying recipes refined over generations in Turkey’s Jewish quarters. Ima embodies the 1950s wave of immigrants adapting Turkish-Balkan traditions to their new home. Puni tells perhaps the most remarkable story: Eastern European Jews who, finding themselves in a Balkan neighborhood, learned to make Balkan pastries as an act of integration and community-building.
Walking through Levinsky on a Friday morning, sampling bourekas from all three, you’re tasting these intersecting histories. You’re consuming the culinary diplomacy of the Puni family, the preserved traditions of Turkish Istanbul, the competitive excellence that emerges when two great bakeries operate within shouting distance of each other.
The bourekas itself – that humble pastry of phyllo and filling – becomes a document of displacement, adaptation, and the countless small decisions immigrant communities make about what to preserve and what to change. In Levinsky Market, these stories coexist in the form of crispy, golden pastries served with grated tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs, each bakery’s version slightly different, each carrying its own fragment of history.
