Israeli celebrity chef Eyal Shani lives in Tel Aviv and operates more than 40 restaurants around the world, from Dubai to Melbourne to Singapore.
But last Thursday, Shani landed in New York City for a two-week visit. His mission? To spend some time at his nine restaurants here, which include Malka, his kosher spots on the Upper West Side and in Dumbo; Shmoné, the Greenwich Village restaurant that earned a Michelin star in November 2023 and, now, as of last month, Shmoné Wine Bar, which is located adjacent to Shmoné and is Shani’s first foray into the beverage space.
“I have to purify and extract the food of Shmoné into wine bar food,” Shani said about the purpose of his trip to New York. “For that, I came.”
Located at 65 West 8th St., Shmoné Wine Bar, which opened Feb. 24, boasts a tight menu of creative small bites. According to a sample menu online, items include a cheese plate, a Jerusalem bagel — which is lighter and airier than its New York cousin — and something called “Jewish deviled eggs.”
Now that Shani, 66, is able to visit his wine bar in person, customers can expect some changes to the menu, he said. “Today is my first day; I’m going to create it,” said Shani, who was headed to his newest establishment following a Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.
Shani’s New York empire has grown rapidly since he opened his first restaurant, the fast casual pita-based eatery, Miznon, in Chelsea Market in 2018. While Shani said there have been some unpleasant moments in New York tied to his restaurants’ celebration of modern Israeli cuisine since the Israel-Hamas war — he recounted one post-Oct. 7 evening where he witnessed a husband pulling his wife from the window of Shmoné because, he told her, “there are Jewish people there” — given the situation in Israel and the rise in antisemitism around the world, Shani is more determined than ever to share his food.
“The situation that is happening now is making me very passionate to execute our culture and the beauty of the culture in food and to show it more and more to the world,” he said.
Shani decided on a wine bar as his latest venture because he is a lover of wine; “liquid poetry” is how he describes it.
“I think it’s a transcendental liquid that leads your spirit into the universe,” Shani said.
“There’s a big difference between eating a good dinner without wine and with wine,” he said. “If you are eating a good dinner without wine, it will remain a good dinner, but you will forget it. If you are eating it with wine, you will never forget it because it’s got its own way to extend the experience of your soul.”
Shmoné Wine Bar features a carefully curated wine list by its wine director, Yonatan Chaitchik. It includes selections from Germany, Italy and France, starting at $16 a glass and $60 per bottle.
At the moment, there are only a few Israeli wines on offer — but Shani plans to restructure that, too. “There is no way that there will be no Israeli wines because it’s the place that we came from,” said Shani.
While the wine bar may still be in its infancy, Shani and his team have no plans to rest. The chef is aiming to open a tenth New York City restaurant later this year — a fourth branch of Miznon, which will be located in the food court beneath Rockefeller Center.
On the more distant horizon, Shani and his restaurant group, The Good People Group, have set their sights on opening a restaurant within a forthcoming 55-room boutique hotel in Israel, on the Gaza border at Kibbutz Nir Am, one of the communities targeted by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“The place that was most hurt, the second holocaust, was in the Otef Aza, the Gaza Envelope, so it is the place to build a new society and a new country in Israel,” Shani said. “I don’t have a precise view in my eyes of what it is going to be because many things will change. I want to create a system of locality that we should grow all our food there and that the people who are growing this food are not people from Thailand but they are the local people.”
As Ynet News reported last month, the “luxury rural-style hotel” is “seen as a significant economic and tourism opportunity” in the region. It will be established in partnership with an impact investment group led by Israeli-American investor Adir Waldman; Jack Eisenstadt, an American-Jewish businessman and investor Simon Greenbaum Gross.
Shani estimates that the hotel will break ground in six months and will open in two years. “Even though there are so many sad things that happened there, it should be a place of happiness and looking to the future,” he said of Israel’s border with Gaza.
For the moment, however, Shani is focused on his New York City eateries. He said he’s delighted by his success here, as well as the warm reception he’s received. He thinks New Yorkers appreciate his “wideness,” what may be understood as his creative spirit.
“New York is living under a grid,” he said of Manhattan’s streets. “But there is a big chance in New York, and the thing that symbolizes that chance is Broadway. It goes against the lines of the grid. I think in some ways I am like Broadway. In my mind and in my spirit, I succeed to reflect it on our creations, on our energy [and] in our restaurants.”
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