The next restaurant coming to Peninsula Boulevard has picked a name that doubles as a mission statement. Lo Normali, an upscale modern Israeli restaurant built around live-fire cooking, is assembling its opening team now for a December debut at 1300 Peninsula Boulevard in Hewlett, and by its own description nothing about it is meant to be ordinary.

Everything over fire, in full view

The concept, laid out in the restaurant's own hiring notices, is fine dining cooked over charcoal, smoke and wood flame, with the kitchen open to the dining room so the fire is part of the show. The menu is modern Israeli at its core, drawing on the kitchens that cuisine itself draws on: Middle Eastern, North African, Persian, Central Asian, Caucasus and European influences, all run through the grill.

That puts Lo Normali in the lane of the live-fire Israeli restaurants that have become some of the hardest reservations in New York and Tel Aviv, where whole vegetables, fish and cuts of meat go over open coals and arrive tasting like the fire they came off. It is a style built for a dining room with sightlines to the kitchen, which is exactly what the restaurant says it is building.

The name is a promise

Lo Normali translates as not normal, and the restaurant says so itself in its hiring materials. In everyday Hebrew the phrase cuts both ways: it describes something crazy, and it describes something so good it defies belief. Naming a fine-dining room after that bit of slang tells you the tone they are going for, confident, a little loud, and aimed at being talked about.

A founding team, hired from scratch

The restaurant is staffing every station at once: captains and lead servers, bartenders, hosts, runners and barbacks out front, and sous chefs, line cooks, prep cooks and dedicated live-fire grill cooks in the back. Fine-dining experience is preferred, wine knowledge is valued, and knowledge of Israeli cuisine specifically is not required, because the restaurant plans to train its opening team on the food and what it calls its live-fire philosophy before the doors open.

The posted target is December 1, with the notices framing the window as November into December. New restaurants slip their dates all the time, so treat that as an aim rather than an appointment, but a full founding-team hiring push is the stage where an opening gets real: it means the buildout is far enough along that the owners are paying people to learn the menu.

What it means for the Five Towns

Hewlett's stretch of Peninsula Boulevard is a workhorse corridor, more errands than destination, and a fine-dining room with an open flame kitchen is a different kind of tenant for it. The Five Towns have no shortage of places to eat, but upscale modern Israeli cooking of this kind has mostly meant a drive into Manhattan or at least well up the parkway. If Lo Normali delivers what its own description promises, the drive gets a lot shorter.

One question the notices leave open is certification: nothing in the restaurant's materials says whether the kitchen will be kosher, which in this particular neighborhood is the first question half its potential regulars will ask. The answer will shape who its dining room fills with, and it is worth watching for as the opening gets closer.

It has been a busy week for Hewlett news: the shopping center up the boulevard just landed a national thrift chain for the supermarket space that King Kullen left behind after 45 years. A hamlet's retail strip does not change often, and this fall Hewlett's is changing twice.

Lo Normali has not yet announced reservations or a menu. When it does, the date to circle first is that December 1 target, and the thing to watch is smoke on Peninsula Boulevard.