The journey from what chef Eric Greenspan calls “dystopia to diaspora” will culminate on Tuesday, June 2, when he opens new-school Jewish deli Mish in Los Angeles.
“Opening Mish is a public service,” Greenspan tells Observer. “People want to build the library so that little kids can read. It’s the same thing with Mish, but it’s pastrami.”
Greenspan has had a storied career that’s spanned fine dining, ghost kitchens and most recently the Tesla Diner, but Mish feels very different from everything he’s done before.
“What I did reflected my creativity and my training, but it never reflected my heritage,” Greenspan says. “This is an opportunity to do something with my heritage.”
It’s an opportunity to reflect, honor, pay tribute, riff, expand and create something new.
“This place is not going to feel like the Epcot Center version of the Lower East Side,” Greenspan says. “This is not an homage. This is a progression. It’s an evolution. What was really important is that I wanted to talk about the entire culinary diaspora. Mish is not just an Ashkenazi Jewish deli. Jewish food is not just pastrami sandwiches. Jewish food is not just the Lower East Side of New York. Jewish food is not just Poland. Jewish food is not just Montreal. Jewish food is not just Israel. Jewish food is not just Iran. Jewish food is not just North Africa. Jewish food is not just the Sephardic tradition of how we were before we got kicked out of Spain. Jewish food is all of those things.”
Greenspan is, on one hand, a supremely confident chef. But he’s quick to admit that there are many things he doesn’t know, so he’s asked a lot of friends for help.
“If a Jewish grandmother comes into Mish and calls me out on my matzo brei, I can say, with all due respect, ‘Fuck off.’ Like, I know what I’m doing. I was raised on this shit, too,” he says. “But if a Persian Jewish grandmother comes into Mish and says that’s not koobideh, I can’t say anything.”
So Greenspan asked Ben Shenassafar, who’s known as Ben Hundreds and is the frontman of L.A.’s buzzing Benjamin restaurant, for his thoughts on what kind of Persian food Mish should serve.
“Ben’s response was like, ‘Do it different. Greenify it.’” Greenspan says.
The result of this discussion is Mish’s koobideh-style sweet-and-sour meatballs made with wagyu and lamb.
Greenspan stresses that Mish is a collaborative process, a library that many people want to build. The deli is serving both pastrami and slow-cooked brisket, which are available on sandwiches or on a tray that resembles a Texas barbecue platter. Greenspan worked closely with Matt Giamela of RC Provisions, who also supplies legendary L.A. delis like Langer’s, Canter’s and Brent’s, to develop Mish’s unique hardwood-smoked pastrami with Levantine flavors.
Mish’s charcoal-grilled beef salami sliders, meanwhile, are inspired by a trip that Greenspan and his friend Spike Mendelsohn took to Montreal, where Greenspan fell in love with the little salami sandwiches at Wilensky’s.
“A lot of people know Spike from his Top Chef fame and being a powerhouse in D.C.,” Greenspan says. “But a lot of people don’t know that Spike’s family is part of Schwartz’s in Montreal.”
Greenspan knew he had to visit Montreal for R&D after he signed a lease on a La Brea Avenue space that came with a wood-burning pizza oven. And he knew Mendelsohn would be the perfect guide.
“I had never made bagels,” Greenspan says. “I had never used a wood-fired pizza oven. I didn’t even know how to light one. And I had never been to Montreal. But, yeah, no problem. Montreal bagels are traditionally wood-fired, right? So we’re making Montreal bagels.”
When Greenspan started envisioning Mish’s riff on Montreal bagels, he called Oren Salomon at the acclaimed Starship Bagel in Dallas for help. They ate bagels around Los Angeles and went to Restaurant Depot for equipment. But there was a problem: Neither one of them knew how to light a wood-burning oven. So Michael Fiorelli of Fiorelli Pizza came over and showed them.
Another powerhouse pizzaiolo, Daniele Uditi of Pizzana, assisted with baking trials in the wood-burning oven. So much of Mish’s R&D has been like this, with prominent chefs and restaurant operators coming by for tastings and advice. Aaron May, Burt Bakman, Danny Gordon and Max Miller gave Greenspan feedback. On one of the mornings that Observer visited Greenspan, Ben Shenassafar was in the kitchen tasting a pastrami sandwich.
Greenspan asked Shenassafar, who’s known as Ben Hundreds and is the frontman of L.A.’s buzzing Benjamin restaurant, for his thoughts on what kind of Persian food Mish should serve. The result of this discussion is Mish’s koobideh-style sweet-and-sour meatballs made with wagyu and lamb.
If Mish is a public service, Greenspan sees all the people who’ve helped him as “benefactors.” He’s been dreaming about opening a Jewish deli for years and is grateful for the assistance from friends who believe that Mish should flourish.
Mish’s menu includes a pastrami Reuben, a tuna melt (with Greenspan’s own New School American cheese), lemon blintzes, bagel sandwiches, all-beef Snap-O-Razzo hot dogs, Wexler’s Smokehouse salmon, fried kreplach, shakshuka in a hole, Sephardic chicken salad and much more. Not surprisingly, given the involvement of so many different people, this is a deli that celebrates the idea of overabundance.
Greenspan’s business partner at Mish is prolific restaurateur Bill Chait, who previously opened everything from Republique to Firstborn before working with Greenspan at the Tesla Diner. Mish’s pastry chef is Dara Yu, the youngest winner in MasterChef history. Julian Cox, a four-time James Beard Award nominee, leads Mish’s beverage program, which features coffee, matcha and cocktails.
This is very much a new chapter for Greenspan, who decided to take a long break from restaurants a decade ago because he wanted to spend more time with his two young sons. He knew he was the type of chef who would always be in the kitchen if he were running a restaurant.
But he didn’t stop cooking. He was a ghost-kitchen pioneer who served everything from bacon-and-egg sandwiches to high-end duck dinners. He launched MrBeast Burger. He created New School American cheese. He showed up at Coachella with different pop-ups year after year. And then he returned to restaurants with the Tesla Diner.
He thinks of the last 10 years as the dystopian part of his career. But his children are older now and don’t need him around all the time, so Greenspan can focus on the diaspora part of his career.
“I took my son Meyer to baseball practice two years ago, and he was like, ‘OK, Dad, I’ll see you at pickup,’” Greenspan says. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean? You don’t want me to stay?’ And he’s like, ‘No, I’m fine, just come back and pick me up.’ And I realized that what my kids needed from me now is different than what my kids needed from me in the past 10 years.”
Greenspan started texting people to see if they wanted to open a restaurant, and Chait immediately responded with a yes. Then it was time for Greenspan to talk to his sons.
“I said, ‘Boys, here’s the deal,’” Greenspan recalls. “‘You’ve known me your whole life, and you have no idea who I am.’ I said, ‘You know how Daddy’s crazy? There is one specific environment where the way Daddy is crazy leads to excellence, and that is running a restaurant. It’s time for me to go back to being who I am. It’s time for you to meet your father, because there’s a whole part of my life that you’ve never seen.’”
But Mish isn’t open in the evenings, so Greenspan can go home for dinner and to help with homework. He’s reserving the right to return to Mish and fire up his oven after dinner and homework. It’s all part of the juggling act of being a chef who cares deeply about his work.
“I’m somebody who doesn’t run from challenges,” Greenspan says. “I run into them.”
One challenge that Greenspan clearly recognizes is that Los Angeles and other North American cities have a long history of Jewish delis. In L.A. alone, the original Canter’s opened in 1931, Langer’s dates back to 1947, and Brent’s launched in 1967, to name just three. Greenspan, with help from many friends, wants to rewrite the script.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of giants but unburdening ourselves from tradition to create something that is new and fresh,” Greenspan says. “The entire community behind this is really something. The amount of people who want this thing to happen, not because of their love for me but because of the glaring need for something new and fresh in this space, is fucking insane.”
Mish is located at 127 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90036 and will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
