The chef and restaurateur Eyal Shani, who has made his name in London with madcap pita chain Miznon, is set to launch a more upscale opening next door to Richard Corrigan’s Daffodil Mulligan on City Road. It will be called Lilienblum and will open next month, in May.
While Shani’s Miznon is known for its faintly absurd approach to food — serving, for instance, fish, chips and cottage pie wrapped together in a flatbread — Lilienblum looks to be a slightly more familiar affair. Where Soho’s Miznon and its Notting Hill sibling specialise in fast-casual dining, the City Road opening will instead offer family-style sharing plates.
Nevertheless, it appears Shani’s signature eccentricity has not been tempered. Dishes are said to include “green asparagus perfectly arranged in a paper envelope”, “a slice of cabbage cake that melts into itself”, “seafood pan roasted in tomato ovaries” and “pearls from the ground swirled with farro and clams”. More straightforward will be the ribeye steak — though Shani’s caveat is that it will come “the way God intended” (presumably, then, cooked using lightning) — and a half rack of lamb with Arabic salad.
Menus will be divided by ingredients, rather than by courses, with the cooking led by Oren King, who most recently ran his own catering company but was previously head chef at the Soho Polpo, and before that worked at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. Wine will be looked after by general manager Kitty Sparks, who previously worked at Aquavit. The list will include various Israeli wines and have a heavy Burgundy presence.
Shani opened his first restaurant, Oceanus, in Jerusalem in 1989 and has since opened more than 40 others around the world, with perhaps his most upmarket being HaSalon, which has outposts in Tel Aviv, New York City, Miami and Ibiza. He said of Lilienblum — named for the Tel Avivian street on which one of his earliest restaurants sat — that it would be “the middle ground between the exuberance of HaSalon and our street food-style restaurant, Miznon.”
He added: “This time around, we’ve placed a heavier emphasis on the freshest ingredients and how best to enjoy them in a formal dining setting. We’ve taken a highly seasonal, thoroughly market-driven approach with produce and ingredients heavily inspired by Israel, to the next level. I look forward to seeing the magic of Israeli cuisine arrive in London’s east.”
The restaurant will open for lunch and supper from Tuesday to Friday, and for supper on Saturday. It comes as part of a busy year for Shani, who is also working on a project at the forthcoming Sircle Hotel, which is opening later this year close by Liverpool Street.
