Restaurant ideas for The Good People group “always start with where we want to eat,” says partner Shahar Segal, the creative visionary behind the 40 restaurants (and counting) he and Chef Eyal Shani have opened together in the last 15 years.

It began in 2008, when Shani’s HaSalon restaurant was on the set of a popular Israeli food show.  He and Segal, a noted film director and actor, moved it to a Tel Aviv location where they designed fine dining to be served with wild abandon. People savored new flavors and danced on tables to Segal’s DJ sets. As with all Shani’s ventures, it was an experiment. “I told Shahar, ‘let’s do two evenings a week; I will cook, you DJ and we’ll see what happens,’” he says “You can’t imagine, it was such a happy place, people had to wait six months for a table.” They were onto something.  From there, the two friends built an empire with business visions rather than plans, and restaurant ideas, instead of concepts.  

In explaining their formula – or lack thereof, Shani says, “We have this philosophy, we are in the heart-opening business; it’s a Hebrew expression,” he explains. “Then we build mechanisms, people and management that is all oriented to that purpose and when everyone understands what we’re doing, it is easy to grow.” 

In each of their restaurants, Chef Shani hires and trains the most creative chefs who act intuitively, sources local ingredients wherever possible, and will travel hundreds of miles to track a singularly good tomato. He adamantly maintains “I won’t create anything without finding a good tomato,” which he believes is the core foundation of all his restaurants. “The tomato encompasses all this; it’s a different energy and from the very beginning it has to be its best and be fresh to be a divine food,” he says with wonderment.  

Shani says everything starts with sourcing ingredients closest to his restaurants, as they’ve done for centuries in Mediterranean countries. “In the U.S., it’s not like you’re eating food that was born in the place you’re eating; there’s a big food system where it’s coming from different parts of the country and vegetables are traveling for eight to 10 days from the moment they’re harvested to the moment they appear on your plate,” he says. “By its traveling, they forget the nature they came from. Food is to tell you where it came from, the people that took care of it, the sun the soil, the taste it carries,” he explains. 

In the kitchen, Shani instructs his chefs, “You’re working from intuition, from starving, under a big risk, you’re not trying to be safe, you’re on a journey,” he tells them. “It’s inside your imagination. We’re not testing it in advance, we’re testing it on the people; we’re coming in naked and honest to the product you’re creating.” And thus he describes an ethereal approach to cuisine intended to make the audience “feel something” each time they visit.

Since 2008, The Good People opened North Abraxas, Miznon, Malka, Port Said, Brit Romano, Teder and Mirage in Israel, then expanded Miznon to Australia, Austria, US (New York & Boston) and France, where French Vogue named the fast-casual pita place one of Paris’s Best New Restaurants in 2013. More accolades followed, including Best Lunch in Paris by Traveler magazine. In 2019, they opened HaSalon New York, then in 2021, in time for Art Basel on one of South Beach’s most bustling corners. They ended the year by opening Naked Tomato in New York’s Hudson Yards.  And in May, they opened Shmone on 8th Street in Greenwich Village.

More restaurants are on the horizon, born from ideas, not concepts. “We don’t aim for consistency, we aim for a singular event. Each time we meet our audience, the experience will be different, like theater or reading a good book,” says Segal. “Every day is different in that you’re creating intimacy in that singular moment in time.” Consistency, Segal insists, “kills the vibe and gives you a mechanical feeling. No one will remember you,” he avers. “Our aim is you will remember us and we will remember you.”

For both Shani and Segal, the heart of The Better Guys, lies within “the heart-opening” business. 

“In the end, it’s focused on warmth, to touch people and make them much happier with our food than they were before they met us,” says Segal. “That’s our real passion. And we’re working so hard for that.”