Were you to meet Mishkin’s – and group – head chef Tom Oldroyd on the street your first thought would not be Jewish mother. Just read his response to my live tweet from a roomy booth at Mishkin’s last Thursday (I’m @youngandfoodish, he’s @tomolpo):

@youngandfoodish @tomolpo lunching @MishkinsWC2 with jewish friends from states. we are LOVING food.

@tomolpo @youngandfoodish So sorry I couldn’t be there. Please do give me your feedback, sounds like you’re enjoying it !

A stereotypical Jewish mother, real or surrogate, never apologises for not being there for you. It’s all your fault. Her tweet would go something like this:

@jewishmother @youngandfoodish of all the days to come in for lunch you pick the day i’m not there. that’s gratitude for you.

Not having ancestral ties to Jewish soul food may be a serious handicap for anyone trying to cook it. Or it can be seriously liberating. There’s no family tradition that dictates your matzoh balls be sinkers (dense and heavy) or floaters (soft and fluffy). You’re free to split the diff and make flinkers, as Mishkin’s has done, beautifully.

Likewise, if you’re not born on either side of the chopped liver wars you can do it smooth, chunky or smunky. (Just don’t call it a chicken liver parfait.) I really got into Mishkin’s smooth but thankfully not moussey chopped liver as well as its original garnish, schmaltzed (chicken-fat-lubricated) radish. Still, next time I will ask to borrow some fried onions from that superb, griddle-steamed mini-cheeseburger to accompany the chopped liver.

Salt Beef Bagel

Am I happy with everything? I do wish Mishkin’s prepared its own salt beef from scratch rather than source cured briskets from Hensens, as Selfridges Brass Rail and most other London salt beef bars do with varying results.  Even when the Hansens salt beef is not as stringy as it was last week at Mishkin’s (see photo above) its saltiness overpowers. The salt is in the brine to break down the tough brisket meat, not to block out every last trace of flavour. I have a similar problem with English mustard. Traditional or not I don’t see how wasabi nose is helpful to one’s appreciation of a deli sandwich.

Please, Mr Norman, give us some milder New York-style deli mustard as an alternative. If you do I’ll forgive you for not making Mishkin’s a certified kosher restaurant. I’ll give Oldroyd a pass for neither being nor having a Jewish mother. I’ll not say that small plates are laughable for a style of cooking with only two portion sizes, big and bigger. That leaves you with only the pork hot dogs on your conscience.

Latkes, Smoked Eel, Apple Sauce & Soured Cream

London hasn’t been too kind to its Jewish delis. Phil Rabin’s Nosh Bar? Closed. Bloom’s of Whitechapel? Closed. Blooms of Golders Green? Closed. The new Nosh Bar on Great Windmill Street? Opened and closed without a single newspaper review or mention. Gaby’s Deli? Threatened with eviction. Not a pretty record, is it?

Pastrami Reuben Sandwich

If you are an observant Jew who keeps kosher, or someone who believes eating Jewish means eating kosher, then you have an irreconcilable beef with Mishkin’s. I get that. But that means you also take issue with great Jewish delis like the Carnegie and Katz’s in New York, Langer’s in Los Angeles and Schwartz’s in Montreal which – guess what? – are not kosher either. Know also there is no such thing as a kosher reuben sandwich, the deli classic of corned beef, sauerkraut, Russian dressing and Swiss cheese layered on toasted rye, unless, as I understand it, you use kosher meat and kosher cheese and eat the cheese from a separate plate, six hours later.

My feeling is, if it takes an amusing, retro-styled invention like this to make matzoh balls a little trendy, or to get London’s food activists, gentile and non-observant Jew alike, to try cholent (Jewish Sabbath cassoulet) for the first time and get their foot in the Ashkenazic (Eastern-European Jewish) door then mazel tov to Norman. If some Mishkin’s diners go on to read or write about Jewish cooking, as many already have, or seek out kosher and kosher-style foods, or support new kosher businesses like Deli West One, tell me, what’s not kosher about that?

Mishkin’s, 25 Catherine Street, London WC2B 5JS (see map) – 020 7240 2078

Likewise, discriminating young Londoners who, when within three Chardonnays of sober, wouldn’t be caught dead with a Tesco tomato in their organic jute carrier bags can be seen stuffing their reddened faces with questionable kebabs from an Upper Street shop that recycles its moulded and fully cooked meat, unrefrigerated and unprotected, for hours at a time.

At the risk of sounding like a drunken pensioner, things aren’t what they used to be, at least not for me.

In my younger & foodish days, when I got smashed with much greater frequency and far more dedication than I do now, I always tried to finish off a night of binge drinking by stuffing my face with trash food of the highest quality. As a student in Montreal I looked forward to being booted from my local, Taverne Henri Richard, so my drinking buddies and I could rush off to Schwartz’s for its incomparable smoked meat, Le Chalet for succulent rotisserie chicken, an all-night Polish social club for handmade potato pierogi, Arahova Souvlaki for juice-dripping gyro sandwiches or St-Viateur for sesame bagels fresh and hot from a wood-burning brick oven. From these experiences grew a straight C student – and eventually a professional food critic.

Back in my native New York we would hobble if necessary to Katz’s Deli for world-class pastrami, the Market Diner for a copious burger deluxe, Florent for steak frites, Junior’s for its famous cheesecake, Wo Hop for the greasiest subterranean chow fun noodles in Chinatown or, on one particular Saturday night bender, three of the aforementioned.

Living in Paris years later we would crawl on our knees to L’As du Falafel for its amazing spécial, Au Pied du Cochon for gelatinous pig’s trotters and golden onion soup gratinée or the last Vietnamese open in Belleville for a crusty banh mi.

In fairness to London’s late-night, liquored-up foragers, their city is lacking in 24-hour eateries worthy of their loyalty. If London imagines itself a – or even the – gastronomic capital it will have to improve in this category.

To this end I have a suggestion to underground, pop-up restaurateurs, existing as well as aspiring: Why don’t you serve high-quality impulse food in your flat on weekends from midnight to 4 am? Think of all the advantages: You wouldn’t be competing with licensed restaurants. You’d be performing a public service while enhancing London’s status as a great dining city. Were your soufflés to fall it’s unlikely that anyone would notice, much less give you grief. And given the likelihood that someone will purge the food you spent hours preparing you would not be expected to put out fancy linens.