He’s the founder of the Miznon restaurant chain who’s said to be the “Godfather of Israeli cuisine”.
And in an exclusive interview with the JC, Eyal Shani shares his belief that cooking is less about following a recipe than forging a connection – between an ingredient and the person eating it, between a chef and the people he feeds, and, ultimately, between people themselves.
Food is “a thing [that enters] through your mouth, but [touches] the deepest part of your existence”, the celebrity chef says. “So, to cook is a big responsibility, because you are giving people something that will be absorbed and change their behaviour, maybe for a few minutes or maybe for a lifetime.” But with some 65 restaurants now bearing his name around the world, how does Shani preserve that deeply personal philosophy when it is translated through dozens of chefs, cities and cultures?
“It’s a beautiful question, and maybe the question of my life,” he tells the JC on a video call the morning after the opening of his latest Malka restaurant, in Beverly Hills – a significant step in his expansion across the West Coast.
“The truth is you cannot,” he admits. Instead, every time he opens a restaurant, he spends about a month working closely with its head chef, “imprinting” himself on them.
“I’m living with him, we are going on walks together, I’m telling him about the books I’m reading, the movies I saw, the music that I hear. We talk about food, we go to the markets, prepare food together, absolutely living one with the other.”
After that month, Shani believes he can give the chef “another eye” through which to see food. “It is like I am stamping my soul into his soul.”
Shani likens the process, repeated dozens of times over his career, to building “a tribe” united by his approach to cooking.
The 67-year-old Michelin-winning chef grew up in Jerusalem. As a boy, his vegan grandfather would take him each week through the city’s markets, fields and vineyards – experiences that continue to shape his relationship with food and his belief in the power of one-to-one mentorship.
Since opening his first restaurant in 1989, Shani now sits atop an empire spanning 15 different concepts, with his best-known brand, Miznon, growing from Tel Aviv into an international phenomenon.
His restaurants now stretch from Israel, the United States and Britain to Panama, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Austria, Canada and France. He is also a long-running judge on MasterChef Israel.
At the heart of it all is what Shani calls “naked food”: a profound respect for raw ingredients, treated almost as living entities and transformed through an instinctive, emotional style of cooking. His latest venture, Naked Tomato, is built around an image of several generations of a family gathered around a table, “laughing, dipping, tearing, and sharing food together”.
That emphasis on sharing is increasingly important to Shani in a world where eating alone has never been easier. Takeaways and delivery apps have, he believes, eroded some of the social purpose food has served for thousands of years.
“I believe that more and more, it’s [becoming] too easy to eat alone,” he says. “[You eat in] your own apartment, you eat in the office at your desk. But you come to a restaurant to be a part of something that is big.”
Yet while they are about sharing, his restaurants have also become entangled in the politics surrounding his homeland.
Earlier this year, his Miznon restaurant in Notting Hill was targeted by fierce demonstrations and calls for a boycott because of its connection to Israel.
“To be an Israeli that is working and creating outside of Israel, it’s not easy these days,” he reflects.
“There have been so many demonstrations against restaurants of mine around the world, there has been so much hate.”
He believes Israel is increasingly viewed as a country “that tried to delete all her neighbours”, arguing that people “don’t have enough information” and do not see the complexities of the conflict or understand “what is really happening, what [happened] on October 7”.
The Middle East, he says, is a “region of disaster”. But amid the images of bombing, rubble and hatred, Shani sees his role differently.
“I am an ambulance,” he says. “I came to the world to [spread] good. I hate governments, I hate politicians, I hate [any group]. The relationship I want is only between me and people. I want to spread only food and joy.”
That instinct – to look beyond the noise and find something human – also lies at the heart of his approach to innovation.
For Shani, the secret to inventive cooking is the same as the secret to a fulfilled life: resist complacency. Look again at what seems familiar, even something as ordinary as a tomato.
“When I was born, there was [the] tomato. Even now, there is [the] tomato, and it will [exist] long after all of us. So, ingredients are not changing. What is changing is how we use it.”
He compares cooking to language: the 26 letters remain the same, but what we create with them is constantly evolving.
Then comes a more intimate comparison. Looking at a lover, he says, you might wake up one morning and think, “oh, how beautiful you are”, even though you saw the same face the night before. Somehow, it looks new. So, it must be that way with cooking. We must look every day on the ingredient with a [fresh perspective]. This keeps the innovation coming, the excitement, the joy and the thrill of cooking.”
For all his global success, however, Shani knows that one identity will always accompany him. “It’s written on me,” he says of being seen first and foremost by some as an “Israeli Jewish guy”. “And there are some aspects that I’m very proud of to be Israeli, there are some other aspects I feel ashamed.”
He remains, nevertheless, fiercely proud of the cuisine he carries with him around the world.
“I carry it so proudly,” he says. “We are a small country, an underdog, [but] a place where so many beautiful things are happening. It is one of the most interesting cuisines that is happening anywhere in the world.”
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