Two restaurants.
Two menus.
One Chef.
One City.
It's quite easy to mistake one restaurant for the other.
Especially since they're two minutes walk away from each other and you might easily find yourself at one place instead of the other.
That's what happened to me.
A couple months ago, I thought I was having dinner at Miznon on 6 Stanley Street, only to find out that I was in fact at North Miznon on 110 Amoy Street.
You can say I should have googled.
But the dinner had been meant as a surprise, and I didn't know nothing until I got there.
So this time when a friend told me we were going for Israeli, I made sure I found out exactly which one, and at where.
The response, I have to say, was a distinctly Singaporean one.
"Haiya... that one, that one, that pita bread one."
Well, there you go- the summation of casual Israeli street fare in the brain of a Singaporean, and the vernacular of the local.
Technically it's not quite a wrong description, but a rather accurate one.
The menu of Miznon (at 6 Stanley Street) is two-thirds Pita.
It, however, has a category they call Out Of The Pita, where those who don't want pita bread can have something like Jerusalem Mezze, or Fresh Golden Bag of Calamari, or Fish and Chips, or e dish they call Adom Yam.
The Jerusalem Mezze sounds interesting.
I don't know how it looks like but it's got falafel, tahini, baba ganoush, maggie tomatoes, vegetables, olives, eggs, and oh, wait, crispy pita.
I guess one can go for the calamari- fried fresh squid in a crispy batter served with aioli and lemon.
Of course, one can go all Mideast and have the Adom Yam, a dish (also) of calamari (but charred), with tomatoes, onions, sour cream, and parsley.
Maybe one day I'll go for the Adom Yam when I have a larger appetite.
But not this evening.
This evening I had come because I wanted to have the Pita.
Trying to decide which one I should have took a bit of decision making.
Would it be better, I wondered, to go with the meat, or with the vegetarian?
The Chicken Liver, the Moussaka, and the Intimate seemed good.
But so did the Lavan, the Falafel Burger and the Mushroom.
I finally decided on the Lavan.
Partially because my companion had ordered the Abu Kebab, partially because I had fallen in love with tahini, and partially because I wanted to try how roasted cauliflower tasted like.
I'm Chinese, and so I'd initially thought that the cauliflower would come looking like how it usually looks in Chinese-style cooking.
I was so wrong.
It looked closer to like cauliflower rice instead.
I loved it.
There was the fine little pieces of cauliflower, there was the carefully chopped up parts of what makes salsa, the very faint, almost hidden, flavors of chili, and the fresh sturdy sticks of spring onions, all of which came tucked neatly and snugly in the pocket of a warm, fluffy, pita bread.
The roast of the cauliflower didn't come out very much in taste, but it had a lovely crisp, crunchy texture which I liked.
I also liked the tahini which, since my last visit to North Miznon, has become one of my new favorite foods.
The biggest surprise of the Lavan had to be the pita itself.
I guess I've been so used to the crusty kind that the doughy, chewy loaf underneath the paper gave me quite a surprise.
Also there was no green, green taste from the cauliflower.
Maybe the tahini had something to do with it.
After all the dish felt a little like a salad, what with the flavors of toasted sesame (tahini) wrapped around the tart of the chopped tomatoes, the other greens, and even the chili.
If the Lavan felt like a salad sandwich, the Abu Kebab felt like a plate of kebab-styled meat served up between two loaves of fresh pita bread.
It wasn't anything like we expected.
]Inside this pocket were little chunks of beef and lamb mixed together with little cubes of chopped juicy tomatoes, salsa greens, onion, chili, tahini and a generous sprinkling of parsley.
There was a bit of initial surprise at the size of the meats, (I guess the word 'kebab' had been taken a little too literally) but the 'smaller-sized' chunks didn't detract the faint smokiness of the beef and the lamb, and it was a very enjoyable pita pocket altogether.
The loveliest thing about the whole meal was the size of the bread.
I don't know if this is what F&B sometimes calls "American" portions, but if this loaf was anything like those in ancient times, then I have to say that the Israelite of B.C. times must have had quite an appetite if (quoted from the Christian Bible) a mother prepared five loaves- of this size- plus two fish for the lunch of (just) one boy.
Whatever the size, whether Israelite or Israeli, one thing that struck me about their food was the presence of heart, and soul.
Every bite of the Lavan gave ma a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
It felt like I was being fed.
It felt like I was given food to feel full.
You know, there's a word in the Dutch vocabulary known as hygge.
There's also a word in Hebrew (thank you Jewish Food and chabad.org) that carries a somewhat similar meaning.
"Heimish"- based on an Yiddish word, it describes things that are homey, cozy, unpretentious or familiar. It can mean 'make yourself at home', it can mean 'nice and informal', it can mean 'one of us', it can also mean 'home cooking'.
I can say that the experience at Miznon felt heimish to me.
Perhaps it was the friendly service.
Perhaps it was the little place of warm bread and cold tahini dip that got served up the moment we sat at our table.
But the heimish feeling was definitely there.
It was in the Lavan Pita.
It was also in the Abu Kebab Pita.
Someone might say that it is not only the food that is heimish, no, no, you must also include Miznon's decor.
And en might say that we must not neglect the dessert because 'sweet' is a very important part of a good meal and so it must be considered heimish too.
I have to agree.
We had a dessert of tiramisu.
Was it homely?
Yep.
So, next time I go, besides the Mushroom Pita and the Adom Yam and the Folded Cheeseburger (which has no cheese, by the way), I want to the try the Apple Crumble with Whipped Cream.
I like apple desserts.
And it does sound very heimish too.