The owner, Sinan Jahic, cooks his pizzas in a wood-fired oven. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Some of the best pizza in Kaiserslautern is right outside the gates of the U.S. military base at Kleber Kaserne.
The pizzas at JaMaMaSi come with gourmet flair, served out of a food truck featuring a wood-fired stove.
The pizza at JaMaMaSi is well-sauced, drizzled in olive oil, and has an airy crust. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
The pizzas are about 12.5 inches wide and cost 8 to 12 euros. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
The pizzas are well-sauced, drizzled in olive oil, with five varieties of toppings resting on an airy crust. When the pies emerge steaming hot from the oven, the slices feel so light that you barely need teeth to eat them. They stand out among the bland pizza offerings common in this part of Germany.
The owner, Sinan Jahic, is someone who isn’t content to serve boring food. He’s always looking for something new. Sometimes he puts garlic confit or honey on the pepperoni pizzas. For weekly specials, he tries other more novel ideas: there were pizzas with fire-roasted pineapple, cherries, ‘nduja sausage and Italian ham; and ones for Halloween that had smashed pumpkin puree and gorgonzola cheese.
Some skeptics raised an eyebrow — maybe a tad too much sauce — for their liking during one recent order. But the taste of these experiments won over even the toughest critics.
JaMaMaSi offers sandwiches such as this one, which heaps porchetta, arugula, garlic confit, roasted vegetables and pepper flakes on fresh bread. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
My favorite dish at JaMaMaSi is one of the sandwiches made on fresh bread, heaped with smoky porchetta, arugula, garlic confit, roasted vegetables and pepper flakes.
These ingredients and the variety of dishes seem much more than one would expect from a food truck next to a military base and a recycling center.
JaMaMaSi has pepperoni, mushroom and marinara pizzas, and modifications are possible for people with lactose intolerance. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Sinan Jahic tucks in the bottom of a dough ball so the gases produced by the yeast cannot escape. Instead, they provide airiness to the crust of his pizzas. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Jahic, 45, opened his food truck next to the base in May. His wife is in the Air Force, and JaMaMaSi derives from the first two letters of her name, his two children, and himself. Jahic said he’s worked in restaurants for a long time in the U.S., Germany and Italy.
He said he’s had months with very few customers. His location, on a side street by the base, next to the parking lot of the recycling center, can be hard to find. And he says he’s been told that he should focus on making simpler foods like bratwurst.
That would be a shame. The last thing this city needs is more bratwurst.
Instead, Jahic has chosen to make food that’s a little more daring and lot more work.
Specials at JaMaMaSi have included chili and cornbread, macaroni and cheese, and meatballs. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
Convenience normally trumps all. But he’s out there, hunting for fresh ingredients, such as mushrooms picked by hunters stalking the hills around town, or greens and salami arriving from Italy, brought to Germany in the trunks of cars and usually bought during parking lot rendezvous like they’re political secrets.
“I’m a gourmet myself,” Jahic said. “I like good food. The biggest luxury that we have in life is what we eat.”
JaMaMaSi Foodtruck offers Italian-style pizza out of a parking lot next to the U.S. military base at Kleber Kaserne in Kaiserslautern, Germany. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)
JaMaMaSi Foodtruck
Address: Daennerstrasse 9, Kaiserlsautern, Germany. The foodtruck next to the parking lot of the recycling center.
Hours: Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Prices: Pizzas are about 12.5 inches wide and are 8 to 10 euros. Sandwiches are 7.5 to 9 euros.
Information: Instagram: instagram.com/jamamasipizza
