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.
