Ashkenazim Do It Better may sound like an odd name for a restaurant dish, but Dan Pelles’s smoked trout appetiser has been packing them in at The Coal Office in King’s Cross. It’s a reminder from the new head chef that Israeli cooks don’t need to rely on spicy Sephardi and Mizrahi ingredients to tickle customers’ tastebuds.

“My parents are both Ashkenazi, and I’m going to be putting on my grandma’s chopped liver as a Friday special,” says Pelles, who thanks Covid for grounding him in Israel for two years.

At the time it seemed interminable but were it not for the pandemic he might never have met Assaf Granit and been launched on a new career at the popular London restaurant that Granit, co-founder of Jerusalem’s Machneyuda, launched with designer Tom Dixon in 2018.
Pelles does have an illustrious past to justify his self-confidently named dish. He was one of only ten interns at New York’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Jean-Georges to be kept on as a paid chef, and he also took second place in Israeli television cooking show, Game of Chefs, on which Assaf Granit was a judge.

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London's Coal Office is already popular

“I was lucky enough to be mentored by Assaf, and we really clicked,” says the 33-year-old. “When I told him I was moving to London, he said he had a position for me.”

Ra’anana-born Pelles might have never left New York had he not fallen in love with and married Maria, the maître d’ he met during at Jean-Georges. “She moved from the restaurant to a role which gave her the chance to relocate to London — and I agreed so long as we could spend some time in Israel first.” It was in his native country that he determined his professional future, thanks to a dream he had at the age of six after watching the film The Beach. “I had a vision of a restaurant on a lagoon to which I had to travel underwater on a people-mover; after that I started cooking meals for my family at a very young age.”

Pelles’s mother, who hails from Glasgow, remembers her son precociously rearranging pots and pans in the kitchen throughout his childhood. By the age of 13 he had secured a job at Il Pastaio, a Tel Aviv Italian restaurant where his lawyer father ate lunch every day. He worked there every summer until he started his military service. “I progressed from washing dishes to peeling onions and potatoes and learning how to brunoise them,” he says proudly.

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Fresh seasonal veg top the bill

Like nearly all young Israelis, he followed army service by travelling — in his case all over South America, returning to work as mixologist and bar manager at a friend’s drinking establishment in Herzliya: “I love the world of alcohol as well.”

He was torn between studying law and joining his father in his practice or going into food tech and inventing some wonderful new ingredient. “Then my brother suggested I should go to the USA to train [as a chef].” After a spell at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America he was accepted at Jean-Georges in 2014 and stayed there for five years.

“I left when realised I had learned the ins and outs of working every station, and my relationship with the head chef was a little rocky.” A further two years of private catering for a Filipino boss followed, and then it was time to leave New York and return to Israel. What was to have been a short trip home was lengthened by Covid. “Eight months of doing nothing until Game of Chefs popped up in my Facebook.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Since arriving at the Coal Office in September, Pelles has been developing his own menu which will debut shortly. Despite the smoked trout, which is coming off, and the chopped liver which will come on, he plans to move the restaurant bravely and boldly in the plant-based direction already embraced by several of the world’s most famous chefs. “I want to move much more towards vegetables, because it’s more like the way we eat in Israel and because the world is changing in that way. It’s not that meat and fish should be off the menu, but they should be eaten as special occasion dishes.”

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Pelles brings his love of food science to the Coal Office kitchen

He is looking forward to showcasing ingredients his customers may not yet have tried — white asparagus as well as green, and the wild vegetables and herbs he has discovered during his months in Britain which he says are unknown in Israel.

Meanwhile, the food technician within him who never got to develop new ingredients has come out in the innovative purpose he has found for the gallons of whey that used to be poured away at the Coal Office after making labneh. “I am keeping some of the whey, reducing it down to a toffee-like substance and using it to make a vinaigrette. It works brilliantly with the earthy white asparagus and the freshness of a green asparagus salad laid on top.”

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The unconvinced will find other inventive dishes combining vegetables with dairy, like Shula’s calzones, filled with potato, pecorino and feta, dressed with almonds and a mix of brown butter and tomato water. Not to mention an unexpected take on Jerusalem’s favourite roasted aubergine; Pelles adds not only the usual tahini but the raspberries he has taken such delight in discovering in UK produce markets, along with pistachio dukkah, tomato and chili.

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