Miznon’s Ice Cream in a Pita Is Delicious — Trust Us!

Image by liz steinberg

Image by Liz Steinberg
Eyal Shani, Israel’s favorite bad-boy celebrity chef, created a small stir in the food world earlier this year when he launched the second branch of his gourmet pita sandwich joint Miznon with an innovative new menu item — ice cream in a pita.
Shani, known for his antics on television as well as in court and on Instagram — he is a judge on Israel’s reality TV cooking contest MasterChef and is also in the midst of a bankruptcy settlement over a previous restaurant — has several restaurants, including upmarket North Abraxas. Even his food is controversial, with detractors claiming that the chef is laughing at his customers by charging top prices for what would seem to be simple food.
At Miznon, at least, the pita sandwiches are affordable and come with fillings including hot entrecote, Shani’s signature roasted cauliflower, and, yes, ice cream. The new branch opened on Tel Aviv’s central King George Street in August, and sports a rustic but hip decor and loud music. The unconventional pairings succeed because of the care and thought put into the flavor combinations and preparation, as well as the interesting selection of condiments, which include buckets of cream cheese, grated tomato and Atlantic sea salt.
On the face of it, ice cream in a pita sounds like a gimmick, and a bad one at that. Why would anyone want to eat it? But at 5 shekels ($1.50) a serving, you might as well give it a try, and the result is surprising.
The dish consists of a crescent of oven-fresh pita filled with a schmear of sweet, cooked bananas and topped with small scoops of mastic-flavored ice cream. Mastic, also known as gum Arabic, is a kind of tree sap, and it is often used in desserts in the Arab world. It lends a pine-like flavor to the ice cream.
The secret behind why this dish works, ultimately, is that the pita takes on the role otherwise filled by a cone or a cake slice in ice-cream based desserts. True, it’s not sweet, but it doesn’t have to be, since it’s being paired with bananas and ice cream. It turns out that fresh pita soaked in ice cream is actually quite good. Leave it to the mad genius of Shani, who knows how to create buzz as well as to prove that ice cream in a pita isn’t a bad idea at all.
Miznon, King George 30 and Ibn Gvirol 21, Tel Aviv, 03-7168977.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Fast Forward Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Opinion Is JB Pritzker’s very Jewish toughness the key to fighting Trump?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.