Chef Eric Greenspan, a veteran Los Angeles restaurateur who often appears on the food TV circuit, has launched Mish, his modern update of the Mid-City Jewish classic. “I’ve always been jealous of chefs who have discovered their personal culinary memories as children and their own family cooking traditions,” says a James Beard Foundation finalist. “I’ve never done that in my career – until now.”
Greenspan has cooked under the likes of Alain Ducasse, Ferran Adrià and Joachim Splichal. He has also been a childhood student of canned foods. Or, as he puts it, a “student of the game” who studies during pilgrimages to the likes of Katz in Manhattan. But Greenspan insists it is a genre that needs an overhaul to appeal to the appetites of younger generations. “I cook for 20-, 30-, 40-year-olds and their children – not 60, 70, 80-year-olds.”
“I love the Jewish heritage: I stand on the shoulders of giants,” he says. “But not much has changed in the last 65 years. However, the concept of Jewish food has changed, including in Los Angeles,” Greenspan, 51, cites local Levantine-inspired restaurants like Pavel’s in downtown Los Angeles and Ave Q in Studio City, adding: “I wanted Ghosta, but Jewish,” he said, referring to the popular Venetian restaurant. “This was my elevator pitch.” (Other local Next Generation Jewish spots include Belle’s Restaurant in Highland Park as well as Courage Bagels in Virgil Village.)
Non-kosher menu at Mish on La Brea Blvd., just south of 1st Streetstreet St. A series of delicious Jewish cuisine standards that originated in Eastern Europe and were Americanized along the East Coast: chopped liver, fried kreplak, matzah ball soup, potato latkes, and noodle kugel. “When you order a Reuben, it’s cooked in schmaltz,” asserts Greenspan, who previously toyed with prepared foods a decade ago with the brief run at kosher restaurant Fleshick in Los Angeles. His local culinary resume also includes seafood specialty restaurant Silverlake Mare and New American restaurant The Foundry along Melrose Ave. (As a consultant, he expanded the MrBeast Burger range.)
Mish’s aperture in Los Angeles has expanded beyond the Ashkenazi tradition to include the broader diaspora of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. Expect tones on the Persian coco sabzi frittata, a variation of frog-in-the-hole that includes shakshuka, as well as sabich that has been reconstituted into bread form. “My chicken salad has amba,” he says. “My pastrami scrub brings the cardamom. We have a bowl of hummus.”
Mish also features a serious cocktail program, from renowned bartender Julian Cox, which includes daytime matcha specials in flavors like lemon halva with salted tahini cream and Banana Enspanner with turmeric and saffron. Greenspan and operating partner Bill Chait, who has worked at everything from Republique to Tartine, plan to open late, playing vinyl records on a DJ stand, under the title Bar Mitzvah. “It’s kind of like a Kibitz Room situation,” he says, referring to the popular Canter Restaurant annex.
Greenspan’s most famous — and most controversial — project was his most recent: opening the Tesla Diner in Hollywood. Chet brought him in as a consultant while they cooked the mish. Greenspan, who described the job as “the craziest thing I’ve done in my time,” was drawn to the logistical challenge under intense public scrutiny. “Who wants to stand in the middle of a hurricane and control it? I do. “It’s about interest, passion, effort and challenge.”
Greenspan recalls that Tesla executives “were not the easiest people to work with,” and that he did not expect to be embroiled in backlash against CEO Elon Musk’s far-right policies. (The restaurant opened while the Tesla chief was heading to the federal government as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump.) “I started the project with the arrogance of a typical liberal Democrat who thought there was no way Trump was going to win the damn thing again,” he says, referring to the 2024 presidential election.
Greenspan is aware that launching a take-out restaurant for the first time in 2026, amid a historic rise in anti-Semitism, could be seen as a political act. “People ask me: Is this a good time to start a Jewish restaurant?” “Now is exactly the time to do it,” I say. He’s frank about what he describes as “the terrible filth that’s happening in this country right now to my people,” and how he sees Misch, which he would like to replicate, as an opportunity “to bring to the world, in my own way, what’s beautiful about Jews and Jewish life. The deli brings people together. It’s a center for the community. Not just for the Jewish community, but the community as a whole. It’s a multi-national culinary solution.”
