{"id":3565,"date":"2026-06-15T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/15\/eric-greenspan-believes-his-new-jewish-deli-is-a-culinary-multi-state-solution\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T23:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T23:07:00","slug":"eric-greenspan-believes-his-new-jewish-deli-is-a-culinary-multi-state-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/15\/eric-greenspan-believes-his-new-jewish-deli-is-a-culinary-multi-state-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Greenspan Believes His New Jewish Deli Is a \u201cCulinary Multi-State Solution\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\tChef Eric Greenspan, the seasoned L.A. restaurateur who often materializes on the food TV circuit, has debuted Mish, his modern update on the classic Jewish deli in Mid City. \u201cI\u2019ve always been jealous of chefs who\u2019ve explored their own personal culinary memories as children and their own family culinary traditions,\u201d says the James Beard Foundation finalist. \u201cI\u2019ve never done that in my career \u2014 until now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tGreenspan has cooked under the likes of Alain Ducasse, Ferran Adria and Joachim Splichal. He\u2019s also been a disciple since childhood of delicatessens. Or, as he puts it, \u201ca student of the game,\u201d studying during pilgrimages to the likes of Katz\u2019s in Manhattan. But, Greenspan insists, they\u2019re a genre in need of an overhaul for the appetites of younger generations. \u201cI\u2019m cooking for 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds and their kids \u2014 not 60-, 70- and 80-year-olds.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI love the legacy Jewish delis: I stand on the shoulders of giants,\u201d he says. \u201cBut not much has changed in the past 65 years. And yet the perception of Jewish food has changed, including in L.A.\u201d Greenspan, 51, cites the Levantine-inspired local hits Bavel in downtown L.A. and Avi Cue in Studio City, adding, \u201cI wanted Gjusta, but J-E-W,\u201d referring to the hit Venice restaurant. \u201cThat was my elevator pitch.\u201d (Other touted next-gen local Jewish spots include Belle\u2019s in Highland Park as well as Courage Bagels in Virgil Village.)<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tMatzah ball soup at Mish.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJakob Layman<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThe non-kosher menu at Mish<\/a> on La Brea Blvd., just south of 1st<\/sup> St., runs the gamut of Jewish deli standards originating in Eastern Europe and then Americanized along the Eastern Seaboard: chopped liver, fried kreplach, matzah ball soup, potato latkes, noodle kugel. \u201cWhen you order a Reuben it\u2019s griddled in schmaltz,\u201d assures Greenspan, who previously tinkered with deli a decade ago with the brief L.A. run of kosher Fleishik\u2019s<\/a>. His local culinary resume has also included Silverlake seafood specialist Mare and the New American restaurant The Foundry along Melrose Ave. (As a consultant, he\u2019s scaled up MrBeast Burger.) \t<\/p>\n

\tMish\u2019s L.A. aperture is widened beyond the Ashkenazi tradition to encompass the broader diaspora of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewry. Expect riffs on the Persian frittata kuku sabzi, a variant of the toad in the hole involving shakshuka, plus sabich reconceived in bagel form. \u201cMy chicken salad has amba,\u201d he says. \u201cMy pastrami\u2019s rub brings in cardamon. We have a hummus bowl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tMish also features a serious cocktail program, courtesy of the noted barman Julian Cox, which includes daytime matcha offerings in flavors like lemon halva with salted tahini cream and banana Einspanner with turmeric and saffron. Greenspan and his operating partner Bill Chait, who\u2019s worked on everything from Republique to Tartine, are planning to open late, playing vinyl records on a DJ rig, under the heading Bar Mitzvah. \u201cKind of like a Kibbitz Room situation,\u201d he says, alluding to the venerable Canter\u2019s deli annex.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tBagel with lox at Mish.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJakob Layman<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tGreenspan\u2019s most high-profile \u2014 and controversial \u2014 project was his most recent: opening the Tesla Diner in Hollywood. Chait brought him in as a consultant while they were cooking up Mish. Greenspan, describing the job as \u201cthe craziest fucking thing I\u2019ve done in my time,\u201d was drawn to a logistics challenge under extreme public scrutiny. \u201cWho wants to stand in the middle of a tornado and control it? I do<\/em>. It\u2019s about attention, emotion, effort, challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tGreenspan recalls that Tesla\u2019s executives were \u201cnot the easiest people to work with,\u201d and that he didn\u2019t expect to be caught up in blowback against CEO Elon Musk\u2019s hard-right politics. (The diner opened as the Tesla head took a hatchet to the federal government as a senior advisor to President Donald Trump.) \u201cI had started the project with the hubris of a standard liberal Democrat who thought that there\u2019s no way Trump\u2019s going to win this goddamn thing again,\u201d he says, referring to the 2024 presidential election. \t<\/p>\n

\tGreenspan is aware that debuting a deli in 2026, amid a historic spike in anti-Semitism, may be perceived as a political act. \u201cPeople ask me, \u2018Is now the time to do a Jewish restaurant?\u2019 I say, \u2018Now is exactly the time to do it.\u2019\u201d He\u2019s blunt about what he describes as the \u201cterrible shit going on in this country right now towards my people,\u201d and how he sees Mish, which he\u2019d like to replicate, as an opportunity to \u201cbring into the world, in my own way, what\u2019s beautiful about Jews and Jewish life. A deli brings people together. It\u2019s a center for community. Not just for Jewish community, but community as a whole. It\u2019s a culinary multi-state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tThe dining room at Mish.<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJakob Layman<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chef Eric Greenspan, the seasoned L.A. restaurateur who often materializes on the food TV circuit, has debuted Mish, his modern update on the classic Jewish deli in Mid City. \u201cI\u2019ve always been jealous of chefs who\u2019ve explored their own personal culinary memories as children and their own family culinary traditions,\u201d says the James Beard Foundation finalist. \u201cI\u2019ve never done that in my career \u2014 until now.\u201d Greenspan has cooked under the likes of Alain Ducasse, Ferran Adria and Joachim Splichal. He\u2019s also been a disciple since childhood of delicatessens. Or, as he puts it, \u201ca student of the game,\u201d studying during pilgrimages to the likes of Katz\u2019s in Manhattan. But, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2030,2,2029,197,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-and-restaurants","category-hollywood","category-local-news","category-los-angeles","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}