Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles, CA – A Nazi swastika was scratched into the roll-down security gate of an Israeli-inspired restaurant on San Fernando Road, according to photos on the restaurant’s Instagram page.
Mazal, which features light Mediterranean cuisine, posted photos last weekend showing the racist insignia etched three-lines-thick into the metal.
“In the process of opening Mazal, a common bit of advice I kept hearing from people in my life was to NOT brand the restaurant as Israeli, and rather to market the place as ‘Mediterranean’ or ‘Middle Eastern,’” the owner, Tal Zaiet, posted. “This is one of the reasons why.”
The post added that the restaurant has received “yelp/google reviews with antisemitic remarks baked into them, IG comments and DMs, or people actually calling the restaurant itself with threatening remarks.”
“Yelp and Google thankfully remove all of those the second I report them,” Zaiet told The Eastsider. “but things along the lines of criticizing us calling the restaurant Israeli because ‘there’s no such thing as Israeli food,’ ‘all Israeli food is culturally appropriated Arabic food,’ and we’ve even had one just outright say that they don’t want our business in the neighborhood.”
Zaiet opened the restaurant, which focuses on vegetarian meals, about two years ago in a former warehouse owned by his father on San Fernando Road.
The restaurant is closed until next week during a scheduled break, said a post on Instagram.
