“I always found it was a good story,” says Israeli chef Einat Admony, the owner of Mediterranean restaurant Balaboosta in NYC, about her life when asked about the inspiration behind her new memoir, Taste of Love.
Chronicling both her rise to the upper echelons of New York City’s culinary world and the experience of being left by her first husband, Admony’s slim book truly feels like a TV show in the making—with a happy ending, to boot.
Here, the chef dives into her writing process, how New York has shaped her career, the effects of October 7 on her business and her exciting new project, Moondog, a HiFi listening bar set to open in Bushwick in mid-October.
What inspired Taste of Love and what was the writing process like?
Every time people see my and my husband [Stefan Nafziger], they ask us how we met and now I can send them straight to the book and talk about something else.
I worked on the book with my brother-in-law Joel Chasnoff, who also wrote my cookbook Balaboosta with me. He’s very structured and I appreciated that a lot.
This was a lot of fun and a little like being in therapy because I went down memory lane and revisited things that I’m not used to discussing. A lot of small stuff came up that I had forgotten about.
How was writing Taste of Love different from working on your cookbooks?
Overall, it took six months to write Taste of Love. My cookbooks have taken me three years, which is too long.
When working on a cookbook, you need to be at the grocery store and farmers’ market all the time to get ingredients and then test recipes. It’s a very difficult process for me because, even though I have a restaurant and I do recipe development, I’m still a home cook at my core. When I cook for my family or at the restaurant, I never have measurements or recipes so, to create them, it takes me much longer than other people because I always forget that I just put salt in with my hands, for example.
What’s the magic ingredient to creating a successful restaurant?
There is none. I had successful restaurants but I also closed and failed many times. I always find it very tricky when the competition is so high. When I started in New York, for example, there were practically no Israeli or Middle Eastern restaurants. It’s a completely different world now.
Speaking of, what are your favorite Middle Eastern restaurants in New York?
Miss Ada by Tomer Blechman is in my neighborhood. I also like Spice Brothers.
How about other local restaurants that might not fall in the Middle Eastern category?
Thai Diner is the best! I asked the owner if I can get a punch card or a membership. It’s ridiculous how much time I spend there. I can’t ever get tired of it.
We also have LaRina in our neighborhood. We go there a lot, it’s a nice Italian restaurant.
Have the events of October 7th in Israel affected you personally? How about your business?
I was very vocal at the beginning. I kept posting.
My team was a bit worried because they saw what was happening to [Israeli-owned] restaurants. We were on a list of “Zionist restaurants” and, the minute that happened, we got very busy. The Jewish community doubled down.
I wasn’t worried about that but, at one point, I was worried about my own family and my restaurant family because I grew up with this shit around me and I am resilient but my team has no clue what it all means so I mostly tried to protect them.
Also, since October 7th happened, I’ve been walking around with a star of David necklace and a dog tag for the hostages and so have my kids.
Any other future plans you’d like to discuss?
I’m opening a bar with my younger brother Elon who is a musician in Bushwick. It’s called Moondog and we will be opening in mid-October. We’ll be serving Mexi-terranean tapas. It will be really fun: a cool, cheap, easy and great concept.
