Red flags, grim portents, the deafening clang of multiple alarm bells ringing all at once. However you prefer to describe recognisable restaurant warning signs, there was, during my first visit to Miznon in Soho, a screaming abundance of them. Sound tracked by pulverising Hebrew pop, this first UK branch of the hit Israeli pita chain was basically empty, save for staff hunched over laptops; every table was adorned with a drooping length of butcher’s paper and a single tomato; the walls were chalked with confusing, repeated aphorisms (“Each pita has her own unique birthmark”) that slightly put me in mind of a cell interior at Arkham Asylum.
It was new eccentricities yielding a familiar sort of sinking feeling. And so, despite this place’s pedigree (celebrity founder Eyal Shani has already successfully exported the brand to Paris and New York), I braced for an experience I would struggle to understand, let alone enjoy. But then came warm soldiers of pita bread, plunged into the outrageous, snapping freshness of a sour cream, tomato and green chilli dip, a gloriously beige, hypnotically creamy lima bean stew, and silken, life-changing hummus (given an inspired heaping of warm chickpeas) that was so good it made me burst out laughing. Then, all at once, I realised. Rather than revealing its deficiencies, Miznon’s many weird flourishes are signs of its supreme, wholly justified confidence. It will almost certainly be one of the more befuddling places you’ll eat this year. It will also probably be one of the best.
Successful transfer of some of the concept’s quality and spirit is, I’m told, especially impressive. Miznon — Hebrew for “kiosk” — is an institution in Tel Aviv, but much of its appeal is bound up with that city’s specific attitude. Or as a Miznon devotee mate put it, during a second, far-livelier lunchtime visit: “Basically, it’s outdoors, it’s boiling hot and there are just lots of people shouting in Hebrew.”
During busier services, that boisterous atmosphere is present and correct in Soho. Yet when it comes to the menu — written in a sort of sexually suggestive, Google-translated cod-philosophical argot we should probably call “Miznonese” — there is some unexpected simplicity. Naked tomatoes (“slaughtered in front of your eyes”) brought an enormous, multicoloured bowl of the fruit, thickly quartered, scantly seasoned and at peak heady ripeness. Roast cauliflower had a bewitching poetry: an unadorned, scorch-spotted whole brassica, slow-cooked to give sweet, nutty subtleties.
But, of course, there is nothing restrained about Miznon’s signature pitas — hulking, paper-swaddled monsters that, as Shani has put it, seek to express a city’s culture within flatbread. In Paris this meant beef bourguignon but here it is fish and chips and an enormous wodge of cottage pie. Or, rather, dishes that sound like absurdist culinary pranks until you actually taste them and have your mind steadily blown. The “fish and chips”, a sensitively griddled piece of, I think, sea bass, thick lengths of roast potato, a smear of tartare sauce and gherkin, nails a good chippy tea’s surging rush of fat and vinegar; that cottage pie features crackled, crispy bits in its consoling, carefully seasoned crash mat of stodge.
Life-changing hummus with an inspired heaping of warm chickpeas was so good it made me burst out laughing
Of course, the quality of the pita — fluffy as a shearling-lined mitten, with a lovely, lingering back note of complex sweetness — is the secret weapon. Still, it is the fresh, gonzo excellence, wit and slow-coaxed homespun flavours that really shine through. This, alongside the reasonable prices and sparky, well-drilled team, may be what makes Shani’s creation feel like such a ready-made hit. True, there were some issues (a stray bit of shell in a hard-boiled egg garnish; a ratatouille and tahini pita that didn’t fully cohere). But Miznon is a special, game-changing opening, suited to a time when very little else makes sense. Forget what you think you know. There is method in its madness, and pure brilliance in its bones.
