All around me people are waving indoor fireworks in time to live music. The band plays a series of Israeli pop songs interspersed with traditional tunes — including Oseh Shalom. A chef stands on a high bench, using an aerosol spray to shoot flames from the sparkler in his hand.
Next to him a man in a black brocade suit with chin-length hair — a large Magen David around his neck — is dancing to the music, his hands in the air as if conducting proceedings, his face split by a huge smile.
I’m at the launch party for the first London Isramani event at Covent Garden’s Hotel Amano. The man in black is Ariel Schiff, owner of this and nine other hotels in his native Germany. The room’s packed with party people who’ve all been fed with large platters of mezze-style food to share and are now on their feet dancing.
The event, in recently-opened restaurant Penelope’s, on the hotel's ground floor, could be described as the lovechild of a cool barmitzvah and a club in downtown Tel Aviv.
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Party animal: Ariel Schiff pours the bubbly at the launch bash for the first London Isramani event
It has the trappings of many simchahs I’ve been to — extravagant table decorations, generous hospitality and a party vibe. The Israeli ambiance is reinforced by chefs clattering pans and baking sheets on the open kitchen’s metal surfaces in between firing out plates of food.
Restaurant manager Javier Cerezo weaves among chefs and guests, pouring generous measures of whatever spirit he is wielding directly into the mouths of his willing victims. There’s even a photobooth-style gadget — but way cooler than anything I’ve seen at recent simchahs — stationed in a private dining room so guests can record their fun.
The Isramani party is a well-established regular event at Schiff’s Hotel Mani by Amano in Berlin.
He has seven other properties in the city, each with their own bar and restaurant. Speaking to me ahead of the launch he had told me the parties were invented by him and his Israeli-born wife, Mirit.
“The name comes from combining ‘Israeli’ — the food we serve— and the Mani restaurant where we created them. We came up with the idea nine years ago and now they happen once or twice a month. They are sold out weeks ahead — we’re booking for April next year at Mani.”
Schiff has long enjoyed Israeli food, explaining that his father frequently took him and his family from their home in southern Spain to visit their cousins in Israel, giving him a huge love for the country and its food. It wasn’t until Sabra chefs found their mojo, 15 to 20 years ago, he says, that he started to find it exciting.
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One of the Israeli dishes served
“Until then it was all Israeli salads, meats and hummus — delicious but boring. Then suddenly fusion Israeli cuisine appeared. When I went back [to Tel Aviv] every three or four months there would be a new restaurant. I was super-excited to go there to see the new restaurant and chefs. It was like a revolution.”
When he opened his first hotel restaurant in Berlin — which was the Mani — 10 or 11 years ago, Israeli fusion food was his first choice for the menu.
In the early days of Israel’s explosion of flavour, not everyone understood “it was exotic, and everyone was asking me why, because no one in Germany had any idea what it really meant”.
The initial reaction from those around him to his choice of food was hesitant: “People were saying, ‘We understand that you want to do this because you’re Jewish and have a feeling for Israel, but really, it’s not a good idea.’”
He stuck to his guns and now each of his restaurants offers an Israeli-themed menu. They also offer some of the energy and fun of Tel Aviv’s finest with a DJ on a Friday and Saturday night.
He says that on weekends the restaurants often erupt with music and dancing: “It normally turns into a party with people standing and dancing on the seats and benches.”
But it is only at the Mani restaurant (and now London) that the full-scale parties take place with the huge floral displays and tealights I witnessed in London, a fixed-price menu and a lot of fun.
He also ensures showstopping entertainment. In London a belly dancer shimmies around the room with a candelabra full of lit candles on her head.
She’s dancing to the live music of the band who play between the DJ’s sets of floor-fillers.
“I always book acts that work with the DJ, like the belly dancer or a saxophonist, for example.” Hospitality and a talent for parties could be in Schiff’s blood, as he was brought up around the nightclubs his parents ran in Marbella.
It’s also perhaps why he has always placed so much emphasis on the bars and restaurants in his hotels.
“Ten years ago, hotel bars were still considered bourgeois and boring. People went there because they had nothing better to do. I wanted to make the hotel bar a fun place to be.”
He’s aware that we’ve become used to the Middle Eastern menu and admits that he has started to find Israeli food hackneyed, so always looks for a twist to keep it interesting. At Penelope’s (named after one of his three daughters) the twist is a Spanish/Israeli fusion.
“With my roots in Spain and my heritage in Israel, I have a big connection to both.” He had to educate Amano’s executive chef Shimon Peretz about Spanish cuisine: “He’s from Israel but had no clue about food from Spain so I took him and my managers there to learn about the food.”
The menus in the restaurant and for the parties will be delivered by English chef Fezile (Fez) Ozalgan, who spent two weeks in Germany with Peretz finalising the menu. “Fez brought her ideas, and we had three or four tasting evenings after which we had 60 or 70 dishes to choose from.
Dishes on the opening menu include grilled aubergine with green labneh, Manchego cheese and garlic cream; Calabasa (pumpkin steak) with shimeji (mushrooms) and walnuts and crema Calana with tahini ice cream.
As the party revellers dance and cheer, Fez and her team lay out dessert straight onto the foil-lined bar. Exotic fruits, pastries, chocolate cakes and other sweet treats in a huge grazing table jumble. The last time I saw anything like this was at a Tel Aviv launch party.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl6tDpeoHWp/
Alcohol is poured into metal trays lined up behind them and, as the Star Wars theme tune plays, blow torches are used to light the boozy fires and more singing and cheering ensues. The crowd is at fever pitch. This party looks like going into the early hours.
Given his passion for partying and his non-kosher menus, I was surprised to find Schiff so traditional in his home cuisine.
“Growing up I ate Ashkenazi food — cholent, kugel, kreplach — really very traditional.” He, his wife and their four children still sit down to a heimishe menu after they’ve made kiddush on Shabbat: “Mirit makes chicken soup and roasts a chicken with potatoes.
"We may bring in some salads from the restaurants — it depends on how many we are, just the six of us or 10 or sometimes 20. Every holiday we eat gefilte fish,” he smiles.
The next party will be held tomorrow, 17 December, and he’s hoping Londoners will party like they’re in Tel Aviv. “It’s exciting!” he says.
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