The trip from what boss Eric Greenspan calls for “dystopia for the diaspora” will culminate on Tuesday, June 2, when he opens the new Jewish food school. meat in Los Angeles.
“The opening meat it’s a public service,” Greenspan tells the Observer. “People want to build the library so that young children can read. It’s the same thing with Meat, but it’s pastrami.”
Greenspan has had a varied career that includes fine dining, ghost kitchens and more recently Tesla Dinerbut Mishi feels very different from anything 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 legacy.”
It’s an opportunity to reflect, honor, pay tribute, riff, expand and create something new.
“This place won’t feel like the Epcot Center version of the Lower East Side,” Greenspan says. “This is not an homage. This is a progress. It’s an evolution. What was really important is that I wanted to talk about the entire culinary diaspora. Meat is not just an Ashkenazi Jewish food. Jewish food is not just pastrami sandwiches. Jewish food is not just the Lower East Side of New York. It’s not just Jewish food, it’s Jewish food. Jewish food is not just Jewish food, it’s not just the Sephardic tradition, before to expel us from Spain.
Greenspan is, on the one hand, an extremely confident cook. But he quickly admits that there are many things he does not know, so he has asked many friends for help.
“If a Jewish grandmother walks into Mish and calls me for matzo brei, I can say, with all due respect, ‘look.’ Like, I know what I’m doing. I grew up with this shit too,” he says. “But if a Persian Jewish grandmother comes to Mish and says it’s not koobideh, I can’t say anything.”
That’s what Greenspan asked Ben Shenassafarwho is known as Ben Hundreds and is the head of the buzzing restaurant Benjamin in LA, for his thoughts on what kind of Persian food Mish should serve.
“Ben’s response was like, ‘Do it differently. Make it green,'” says Greenspan.
The result of this discussion is Meat’s koobideh-style sweet and sour meatballs, made with wagyu and lamb.
Greenspan points out that Meat is a collaborative process, a library that many people want to build. The diners are serving both pastrami and slow-cooked brisket, which are available in sandwiches or on a tray that resembles a Texas barbecue plate. Greenspan worked closely with Matt Giamella e Provisions of RCwho also supplies legendary LA delis such as Langer’s, Canter’s and Brent’s, to develop unique Levantine-flavored hardwood smoked beef pastrami.
Mish’s grilled beef sausage sliders, meanwhile, are inspired by a trip that Greenspan and his friend Spike Mendelsohn went to Montreal, where Greenspan fell in love with the small sausage sandwiches at Wilensky’s.
“A lot of people know Spike from his The head chef fame and being a power in DC,” says Greenspan. “But a lot of people don’t know that Spike’s family is part of of Schwartz in Montreal.”
Greenspan knew he had to visit Montreal for R&D after signing a lease on a space on La Brea Avenue 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’d never used a wood-fired pizza oven. I didn’t even know how to light one. And I’d never been to Montreal. But, yeah, no problem. Montreal bagels are traditionally wood-fired, right? So we’re making Montreal bagels.”
When Greenspan began envisioning Mish’s riff on Montreal bagels, he called Oren Salomon in the evaluated Starship Bagel in Dallas for help. They ate bagels around Los Angeles and went to Restaurant Depot for supplies. But there was one problem: none of them knew how to light a wood oven. thus Michael Fiorelli e Fiorelli pizza came and showed him.
Another pizza of electricity, Daniel Uditi e pizzaassisted with the baking trials in the wood oven. Much of Mish’s research and development has been like this, with prominent chefs and restaurant operators coming in for tastings and advice. Aaron May, Burt Buckman, Danny Gordon AND Max Miller gave feedback to Greenspan. On one of the mornings the Observer visited Greenspan, Shenassafar was in the kitchen enjoying a pastrami sandwich.
If Mish is a public service, Greenspan sees all the people who have helped him as “benefactors.” He has dreamed of opening a Jewish deli for years and is grateful for the help of friends who believe Mish should thrive.
The Meat menu includes a pastrami Reuben, a tuna fusion (with Greenspan’s The new school American cheeses), lemon blinds, bagel sandwiches, all beef Snap-O-Rocket hot dogs, Wexler’s Smoking salmon, fried kreplach, shakshuka in a hole, Sephardic chicken salad and many more. Not surprisingly, given the involvement of so many different people, this is a food that celebrates the idea of excess.
Greenspan’s business partner in Mish is a prolific restaurateur Bill Chaitwho previously pitched everything from Republique to Firstborn before working with Greenspan on Tesla Diner. Meat Pastry is Dara Yuthe youngest winner in MasterChef history. Julian Coxa four-time James Beard Award nominee, heads Mish’s beverage program, which features coffee, matcha and cocktails.
This is a very 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 kind of chef who would always be in the kitchen if he ran a restaurant.
But he didn’t stop cooking. He was a ghost kitchen pioneer who served everything from bacon and egg sandwiches to towering duck dinners. He launched MrBeast Burger. He created American New School cheese. He appeared at Coachella with different pop-ups year after year. And then it was back 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 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 said, ‘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 says, ‘No, I’m fine, just come back and get me.’ And I realized that what my kids needed from me now is different than what my kids needed from me 10 years ago.”
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, ‘Guys, here’s the deal,'” Greenspan recalled. “You’ve known me my whole life and you have no idea who I am. I said, ‘You know how crazy dad is? There’s a specific environment where the way dad is crazy leads to perfection, and that’s running a restaurant. It’s time for me to go back to being who I am. It’s time for you to meet your dad, because it’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 help with homework. He reserves 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 someone who doesn’t shy away from challenges,” Greenspan says. “I bump into them.”
One challenge Greenspan clearly recognizes is that Los Angeles and other North American cities have a long history of Jewish food. In LA 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 the help of many friends, wants to rewrite the script.
“We’re standing on the shoulders of giants, but we’re freeing ourselves from tradition to create something new and fresh,” says Greenspan. “The whole 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 dire need for something new and fresh in this space, is crazy.”
Mish is located at 127 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90036 and will be open daily from 8am to 5pm.
