Menu
Eggplant lines
Burnt beetroot carpaccio
Lemon-cured sardines
Intimate wagyu stew
Whole roasted cabbage cake
Bag of green beans
Milk pudding in espresso
F
or Eyal Shani it’s as much about the feel as the flavour.
The Israeli restaurateur and celebrity chef opened the
first Australian outlet of Miznon, his “fine dining in
a fast-food mask” restaurant, in Melbourne last year.
It’s a raucous, high energy, tambourine-thumping kind of place,
like a constant celebration.
“I need energy,” Shani says. “Making street food is all about
getting the energy from the street, of people on the move. I take
that energy and put it into the food.”
These dishes are all from the menu at Miznon Melbourne,
where Afik Gal, Shani’s long-term collaborator, runs the show.
“The dishes that we are doing here are all about Eyal’s
approach and attitude towards ingredients,” says Gal. “It has to be
all about freshness – hardly anything at Miznon is rolled over to
the next day – and pursuing the finest ingredients that you can.
“We give vegetables the stage. We hardly do any manipulation
or any elaborate cooking processes. We use only black pepper and
Atlantic sea salt as flavourings, so that the characteristic flavour
and shape of the vegetables is emphasised. Sometimes we might
make a dish that relies on something traditional, but mostly we
keep the idea of fresh ingredients as the main one.”
Shani’s relationship to his ingredients and his technique
are unique.“Eggplant Lines” is inspired by cocaine, “the way it is cut into
rows by a rhythmic, slightly nervous pulse that opens it with the
edge of a credit card”. On the plate, the rather more wholesome
option of molten eggplant mixed with tahini stands in for the
drug, and the precise cutting technique is all about ensuring that
the eggplant retains its shape.
Shani talks about beetroot as being “an animal with a firm
body that can withstand high temperatures”, and calls his
whole-cabbage dish a “cabbage cake” because of the sweetness the
cabbage attains when slow-cooked and how it is served in wedges.
The cooking at Miznon is the real deal, but it’s not a place
where anyone is encouraged to take themselves too seriously.
Fun is the key consideration. At HaSalon, the Tel Aviv restaurant
where Gal first worked for Shani a decade ago, everything was
cooked from scratch each day, and every night the restaurant
would turn into a “wild animalistic zoo with people dancing on
the tables, people hanging from the roof–afeastandaparty”.
“People ask me if this is Israeli food and I say it’s more
about an approach to ingredients, that’s what we do,” says Gal.
“What’s most important is that there’s an atmosphere of feast
and happiness and love.”
Miznon, 59 Hardware La, Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9670 2861,
miznonaustralia.comp 97
Lemon-cured
sardines