The Good Egg, 93 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 0AS (020 7682 2120). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £90

Occasionally, restaurants bestow upon those of us charged with writing about them a gift, albeit unwittingly. So it is with The Good Egg in London’s Stoke Newington, a restless, elbows-down joint which plays fast and loose with various Jewish culinary traditions from America’s Atlantic East Coast to the eastern end of the Mediterranean. For this egg is not so much good as a curate’s. It’s good. In places it’s very good. But only in parts. They serve dishes that linger in the memory. Sadly there are others I’m trying to forget.

Even a brief glance at chef Joel Braham’s menu will indicate a thoroughly on-trend interest in the flavours of the Sephardic Jews. Whoever got the contract to supply their tahini must be thrilled. The kitchen gets through handfuls of pine nuts and feta, glugs of pomegranate molasses and thick dollops of yogurt. But the look of the restaurant – the typography, the brightly lit, utilitarian room, the curving wooden banquettes – is rooted very much in the American delis of the late 19th and early 20th century. Even the use of the word “appetizing” in the menu letterhead, a reference to the now moribund description of a Jewish deli as an “appetizing store”, is arch, knowing and rather appealing.

Braham says he is inspired most by the deli traditions of Montreal, where they dry-cure their pastrami before smoking for deeper flavour than wet-cured. This is one for what my mother used to call the k’nossers (that’s fake Yiddish for connoisseurs). I had close family in Montreal. One aunt was even in the deli business; I can perv endlessly over details like this. I’m not sure, however, that they need detain many others.

The boats that steamed hard across the North Atlantic in the late 19th century carrying Jewish migrants on the run from pogroms went south for Ellis Island and New York and north for the Saint Lawrence river and Montreal. And yes, each community that developed as a result did have its own particular way of doing things. But the distinctions are for the most part subtle. Still, I admit that what drew me to The Good Egg was the launch of a new menu, listing a “Montreal smoked Hereford short-rib pastrami”, fully accessorised. They might as well have written: “Jay Rayner, this one’s for you. No really, it is. Why haven’t you ordered it already, so soon?”, and left it at that.

The good things at The Good Egg really are very good. Their house-pickled cucumbers, cauliflower and aubergine are serious and strident with crunch and bite. Hand-shaped flatbread comes bubbled and charred with a pool of lightly acidic thyme honey and soothing yogurt to dredge it through. A salad of taut-skinned tomatoes, capers and red onions in puddles of peppery olive oil with a big dollop of house-cured whitefish mayonnaise really does recall a classic New York deli plate. At Russ and Daughters in Lower Manhattan, home to some of the best smoked salmon plates in the city, they would nod approvingly.

It’s obvious in the inclusion on the menu of porchetta that the Jewish influences are only that; they pay no heed to the Hebraic God and his picky eating. It is seasoned with the airy high notes of cardamom rather than fennel seed, and served in a big, thick chunk for £10, with sweet grilled apricots on the side. It is a reason for crossing town. The skin is by turns crisp and succulent. The meat tastes deeply of pig. It is a bravura piece of pork cookery. At the end of the meal, baked cheesecake New York-style is not the heavy, claggy thing it can become, but light and soft; likewise their squidgy pistachio cake pleases. If this had been dinner, The Good Egg would just have been good.

Sadly it wasn’t. I’m willing to see the Iranian baked butter beans in swimming pools of sharp, nagging pomegranate molasses as a matter of taste. They didn’t suit mine. But when exactly the same flavours turned up with the roast cauliflower, it went beyond matters of taste to overkill. There are numerous takes on roast cauliflower at the moment. This was by far the worst. It had a baby-food texture, as if the vegetable had been boiled far beyond anything that could be defined as cruel and unusual punishment, before being grilled. Char marks do not an appetising vegetable make.

And then the short rib, which looked fabulous. It was a dark, spiced curl of bronzed bone-in loveliness. The sourdough with it from the local Dusty Knuckle bakery was fine. Ditto more of the house pickles, the sauerkraut and the deli mustard mayo. But the short ribs themselves were a calamity. Usually pastrami is made from brisket. It’s an unyielding cut which demands more than 10 hours in the smoker before it will surrender. On the upside it has little in the way of connective tissue. Short rib, on the other hand, is one sizable lozenge of meat held in place by an equally hefty strapping of fat and collagen. The meat may not have been tough; finding it was.

But the real problem was that it had been completely overcured. It was so salty as to be inedible, and I say that as a man in training for the hypertension Olympiad. I sent it back. Braham told me later that he was getting it cured off-site, but to his recipe. Having tasted this one, he admitted it wasn’t right. He took it off the bill and, that night at least, off the menu. It was a great shame.

Unfortunately so is the wine list, which is all “natural”. I will not repeat my rant about the misuse of language. The first one we tried tasted, as so many do, like it had been filtered through a pig’s rectum then back again. There was one that didn’t taste like that without being actively nice. It’s a bizarre decision not simply on aesthetic grounds – so many “natural” wines are foul – but because they’re bloody expensive. Most of the wines are over £30, in a place where almost all the dishes are below a tenner, which suits the younger customer base. (The short rib was £21, but was for two to share.)

I refuse to be downhearted. I’m certain they can get the pastrami right. Braham needs to take control of the cure. Rewriting the wine list would not be hard. It can be done. Sort those things out and this curate’s egg would indeed become good.

Jay’s news bites

■ Zelman Meats in London’s Soho, from the team behind the steak restaurants Goodman and the Burger and Lobster chain, runs a short menu of slow-cooked animal. But it’s their way with long-cooked, heavily-glazed shortrib that makes them stand out. I occasionally sneak in here for one. They are proof that it’s
the hardest working cuts that have the most flavour (zelman meats.com).

■ Intriguing news from the US, where the political turmoil around the presidential elections has resulted in a 5% drop off in footfall in the fast casual restaurant sector: pizzerias and the like. Meanwhile home pizza deliveries have gone up, with US shares in Papa John’s now headed towards a historic high of $80, resulting in restaurant sector analysts tipping them for a buy.

■ Elsewhere in the US, Starbucks has come up with a revolutionary plan to reverse a collapse in employee morale, by loosening the dress code. Baristas are now allowed to wear fedoras. Baseball caps worn backwards are still banned. Quite right.

Jay Rayner’s new book, The Ten (Food) Commandments, is out now (£6, Penguin). To order a copy for £5.10, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1