Celebrity chef Eric Greenspan finally gets his ‘grandma moment’ with modern Jewish deli

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Some might know him as “the grilled cheese guy,” a face from Food Network, the founder of the Foundry and Maré, or more recently, the opening chef of the infamous Tesla Diner. Eric Greenspan has worn an array of chef hats over the last 30 years but with the opening of his long-planned Mish Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, he hopes to add another: steward of the Jewish deli.

“I’m not the first deli to have opened in the past 65 years, but I do think that what we’re trying to do is different,” Greenspan said. “I don’t take the responsibility of carrying the torch lightly.”

It took two years to modernize the classics and perfect his pastrami, brisket and turkey recipes. Bagel research brought him to multiple states and another country. He combined a lifetime of Jewish-deli fandom with years of trial and error, resulting in trays of hardwood-smoked, ginger-and-cardamom-scented pastrami beside salads and freshly baked challah; silken-interiored latkes with apple marmalade; wood-fired bagels first boiled in a fragrant spice bath; and a cocktail program involving halva and amba.

Mish is, he said, his life’s work and “the absolute most personal restaurant” he’s ever opened.

But to build it, he had to walk away.

Greenspan divested from his restaurants nearly a decade ago, when his second child was born; the chef’s “all-in” personality, he said, made parenting and running a small restaurant empire difficult to balance. So he sold his Maré restaurants and Eric Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese, but promised that if he ever opened his own restaurant again, it would be a Jewish deli. Then he dreamed of it for years.

“I’ve always been jealous of those Italian chefs who are like, ‘This is my grandmother’s tortellini,’ this passion that chefs bring from their own personal traditions,” he said. “If you look at all the restaurants that I did back in the day, it was always modern-American and fun, quirky stuff and fine dining. It definitely had a personal effect, from my creativity and my training, but it was never founded in culture.”

What followed were years of appearances on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and other culinary shows, plus consulting gigs for the likes of Mr. Beast Burger and a focus on Greenspan’s continuing cheese company, New School American Cheese, which features on the Mish menu.

Namesake inspiration on the wall of the dining room of modern Jewish deli Mish.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Then two years ago, while taking his youngest son to baseball practice, Greenspan realized that it might be time to give his children more independence, and signaled his own opportunity to return to restaurants. He called restaurateur Bill Chait, a longtime business associate, and pitched partnering in a Jewish deli.

Their first space fell through. Then in the fall of 2024 Greenspan’s most infamous endeavor presented itself: a stint at the Tesla Diner, where he joined Chait at the electric vehicle company’s protested drive-in restaurant as a partner and founding chef.

He’d expected some blowback, but not nearly as much as he received. Things had changed drastically between his sign-on before the 2024 presidential election and Tesla Diner’s July 2025 opening. When Greenspan agreed to the project Tesla CEO Elon Musk hadn’t yet performed his gesture widely likened to a Nazi salute. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had yet to exist and yet to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and millions in aid spending both domestically and abroad.

By the diner’s launch, streams of negative social media comments filled nearly every post from Greenspan and the restaurant. Some called him a fascist and questioned Greenspan’s identity as a Jewish American, given Musk’s salute and antisemitic remarks from Musk’s AI bot, Grok. Others surfaced on Reddit boards and other posts reflecting on Greenspan’s involvement; one said he “associates with douchebags, abusers, and Nazis.” That his Jewish identity was ever called into question, especially as he endeavored to open a Jewish deli, was “laughable,” according to the chef.

“I’ve been a Jew for a long time,” Greenspan said, “and I’ve met Elon Musk once.”

In November he departed Tesla Diner to continue building Mish while Chait remained with the project. Greenspan dove back into his deli research.

“The first thing that happened is I had to learn how to make bagels,” he said. He traveled to Montreal to sample and learn from the famous St-Viateur, and gleaned even more know-how from friend Oren Salomon, the award-winning baker of Starship Bagel in Dallas.

“There’s a lot of specificity that went into this project that I wouldn’t necessarily bring to other projects,” Greenspan said. “I think when you come here, it shows.”

The main dining room of Mish in Fairfax during a busy lunch service.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He and Chait found a new space and began stripping back the more industrial decor from recent occupant Workshop Kitchen & Bar, and restoring more of the natural light and wood of another previous tenant, Odys + Penelope. They added a “vinyl room” upstairs, where tables and chairs share space with a record player and plenty of plants. They built a long wooden community table, which stretches down the length of the spacious dining room under the skylights.

They added a full bar, where Mish partner and veteran L.A. barman Julian Cox designed an all-day cocktail and coffee menu that imbues drinks with the likes of amba, smoked harissa, halva and green cardamom. Planned evening service, called Bar Mitzvah and set to launch this fall, will place even more of a spotlight on the drinks.

Greenspan uses a wood-fired oven for his bagels, which are first boiled in a “tea” of star anise, thyme and peppercorn, inspired by an Alain Ducasse recipe for lobster poached in an intensely seasoned broth. Overwhelmed by styles — New York, sourdough, Montreal, produce-topped L.A. — he opted to straddle the line between a few of them.

Mish Delicatessen’s Bougie bagel involves house-cured gravlax, charred-scallion cream cheese, pickled red onion and Persian cucumber on house-made bagels.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“Master Chef” winner Dara Yu is in charge of baked goods, including babka and hamantaschen, rugelach and sea salt black-and-white cookies.

And Greenspan is finally getting his own grandma moment. His overnight-soaked matzah brei, made with browned butter, toasted black pepper and maple syrup, reminds him of his grandmother’s and the smells that would fill his home whenever she visited. To be clear, he said, his recipe is better than hers, “but she never worked for Alain Ducasse,” he joked.

“I never cooked anything in the first 25 years of my career that sparked an intense connection to my childhood, ever,” Greenspan said, adding, “It scratches that itch that I was pretty sure I was never gonna get.”

Mish is proving important to Greenspan’s family life in other ways as well. As they grow older, this restaurant is helping his children understand who he is at his core.

“Running around a grocery store on the Food Network is not your father,” Greenspan said. “Your father is banging food out of the kitchen. Your father’s touching tables. … I didn’t go into this business to be on TV and write cookbooks. I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m pretty good at it. I’ve made a better living out of it than I’ve ever done at restaurants, for the most part. But no, I’m an operator. I like to be in it.”

Mish Delicatessen is located at 127 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.