I have only ever eaten terrible matzo brei. Plates of broken, eggy matzo that taste like soggy cardboard. I apologize to every family member or acquaintance who has ever served me some version of the Passover staple. Being Jewish, I was exposed to my fair share, but never developed a taste or appreciation for this specific delicacy. Most of it barely classifies as edible.
Yet somehow, Eric Greenspan has achieved the unimaginable at Mish Delicatessen. Not only is his matzo brei edible, I actually crave it. Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a 10-year-old version of me guffawing at my current self, with a big “as if!”
Greenspan’s matzo brei is like a plate of excellent pancakes hacked to bits, with every inch of surface area crisp and shellacked with brown butter. He soaks the matzo in a French toast batter laced with cardamom. It’s broken up in the pan, scrambled with diced scallions, seasoned with an avalanche of black pepper, drizzled with a nominal amount of maple syrup and crowned with a fried egg. It’s breakfast. It’s a midday snack. It’s the French-toast-adjacent carbohydrate I prefer to actual French toast.
“Matzo brei is the most personal of all the dishes on the menu,” says Greenspan on a recent call. “And it’s really the most micro regional cuisine in the world.”
Matzo brei is almost too personal a dish to standardize. Niki Russ Federman and Josh Tupper, the owners of the Russ & Daughters Cafe in New York City, famously had to remove matzah brei from the menu, claiming that every person who ordered it complained. It’s supposed to be wet. No, dry. Sweet. No, savory. Scrambled! No, like a pancake. That’s not how my grandmother made it!
I don’t want your grandmother’s matzo brie (or mine). I want the matzo brei at Mish.
Greenspan is a culinary masochist with an admirably outsize ego. Who else would willingly tackle the most deeply contentious foods of the entirety of the Jewish diaspora?
After years spent helming his own kitchens like the Foundry and Maré, he stepped away from restaurant life to consult on various virtual brands like Mr. Beast Burger. He launched a cheese company called New School American Cheese, and he controversially opened then left the Tesla diner (he notes that he signed on before Elon Musk showed any political aspirations). You’ve probably seen him cooking on the Food Network.
In June, he and veteran restaurateur Bill Chait opened Mish Delicatessen on La Brea Avenue in a beautiful, high-ceilinged space flooded with natural light.
The setup can feel a little disorienting on your first visit. Walk past the coffee and liquor bar straight to the rear. You can stop at the open bakery shelves on your left to grab a black and white cookie.
Once at the back counter, a team member helps navigate a tablet. They stand beside you and scroll and click as you dictate your order. Then you take a number and find a table downstairs, or upstairs in a room outfitted with lower lounge seating. The multi-station, multi-person experience feels more communal than disjointed by the time your food arrives.
In true deli form, the menu is even longer than you’re imagining, spanning breakfast, lunch, dinner and foods inspired by Jewish cultures across North America, the Levant and Europe. Greenspan’s cooking is equal parts nostalgic and swashbuckling, with a menu that brazenly reimagines foods most Jewish Americans hold near and dear.
Wagyu beef and lamb koobideh are formed into bite-size, plump spheres doused in a sweet tomato and sumac glaze. Imagine the pinnacle of the cocktail meatball. Shakshuka is presented as a toad in the hole with griddled challah and a fried egg. The bread is slathered in a thick tomato sauce sweet with tomato jam and roasted pepper. Drizzled over the top is what Greenspan calls Jewish Chili Crunch, or JCC. It’s a wonderfully addictive condiment with a subtle heat and a toasty chile flavor, crunchy with all the seeds and spices typically found in everything bagel seasoning.
Greenspan gives kreplach the branding boost it never received, having fallen behind the more popular matzo ball years ago. He fills the dumplings with chopped beef salami, brisket and pastrami, then fries the parcels until crisp in schmaltz (or what Greenspan calls “Jew tallow”). They’re served in a thick, almost sticky chicken jus with an intense, reduced chicken soup flavor, and plenty of that JCC.
Greenspan claims somewhat less creative license with more traditional deli staples, though bagels, pastrami and knishes still stand firmly at the nexus of old Jewish traditions and Greenspan’s chef-y tendencies. The results work beautifully.
Though he never intended to bake bagels, Greenspan couldn’t ignore the wood-burning oven in his kitchen. He infuses the bagel boiling liquid with black peppercorn, all spice, bay leaf, thyme, honey, garlic and salt. The bagels are baked in an oven fueled with cherry wood. At one point during the cooking process, he closes the oven door, filling the chamber with smoke. That flavor permeates the dough with a subtle smokiness that lingers, even when the bagel is toasted, smeared with horseradish cream cheese and piled high with Wexler’s smoked salmon.
They are the antithesis of the crusty sourdough bagel dominating the newer shops around Los Angeles and New York City, with a texture and size somewhere between the styles of Montreal and New York. The Mish bagel is both dense and chewy, with a crisp exterior and a soft center.
The classic deli sandwich also makes an appearance, though it’s a squat, pressed version of the sky high creations at most delis. Greenspan partnered with local meat purveyor RC Provisions to develop both pastrami and brisket recipes for the restaurant. His pastrami is flavored with the earthy, peppery hallmarks of ras el hanout, while the brisket eats like low-and-slow Texas barbecue, but with the sweet and savory notes of a traditional Ashkenazi brisket recipe.
Greenspan features both on his $29 namesake EG Deluxe V2 sandwich. The meat is topped with a slice of melted New School American cheese, layered between two slices of schmaltz-grilled rye slathered with a sweet-and-sour tomato jam. It’s a gloriously Rabelaisian sandwich that perfectly encapsulates Greenspan and his manifestation of a modern Jewish deli.
The most divisive item on the table might be the “10 dollar black and white cookie,” made by Dara Yu, who leads the pastry and bread program. Greenspan requested a black and white cookie without the signature cake consistency, or the lemon zest. Yu’s version is tender to the point of crumbly, coated with both dark chocolate and vanilla icing. Half of my lunch companions found it too dry. The other half appreciated that it tastes like a sugar cookie. I’m still undecided, but I finish it every time.
Is everything perfect? Depends on who you ask. The potato latkes are more mashed potato cakes than disks of shredded potato. Is one style correct? According to my late grandmother Phyllis, yes. I prefer her giant hash brown latkes. But Greenspan knows he’s competing with himself, your grandmother and mine. And Mish is still the Jewish deli of my wildest dreams.
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