The air is damp and it’s drizzling as I sit down on the barely moist bench at Fat Pasha’s back patio. The Dupont Street restaurant – the third on the midtown strip launched by chef and co-owner Anthony Rose – has been open for just about two months. Reviews have been resoundingly positive despite catering to a nitpicky local clientele. Fat Pasha serves Rose’s twist on Middle Eastern food, with an added pinch of personality, and several dashes of schmaltz.
The 41-year-old Toronto-born chef sits across from me in a jean shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His demeanor is more placid than usual. He’s getting over the stomach flu and a broken heart. His love for his restaurant, his son, his employees, his eats, and his customers is, however, evident.
It’s 8pm on a Saturday night and the restaurant is getting slammed. Unexpected rain has limited their patio seating to less than 50 percent capacity (their full awning is being installed on July 28th) and some of the customers are cranky. Those with a more laissez-faire attitude are enjoying everything from the food to the al fresco atmosphere. He remains engaged in our conversation while somehow quality checking with staff and complimenting neighbouring tables on their meal choices. “You’re never going to please them all,” Rose concedes. “But we do our best and we do what we love and that’s what’s most important.”
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Rose has inflected equal parts creativity and calculation into his third restaurant concept, though he admits that he still doesn’t know what he’s doing. The menu is an unapologetic assembly of entrails, salads, and spreads for the everyman, sided by elegant fish dishes, buttery meats, and decadent desserts.
A plate like the chopped liver is modeled off Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House in New York. Topped with gribens, schmaltz fried onions, julienned radish, hard-boiled egg, and a tableside smothering of schmaltz, it’s the best I’ve ever had. Others are altered takes on Yotam Ottolenghi’s creations. Classic Middle Eastern dishes are “fucked with” at every opportunity, inflecting Ashkenazy, Sephardic, and Eastern European ingredients to form Rose’s unique style of “Jew food” into the menu. He uses Bonnie Stern’s recipe for potato latkes and his mother’s preparation of brisket. He doesn’t hesitate to praise those who have inspired him.
“My mother and grandmother are big influences,” Rose explains. “I grew up with matzah balls and liver and kneidlach and brisket – not Middle Eastern food.
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“So I decided to take some of those flavours and put them in there. That’s when it really came alive. That’s when it really became Jew food to me – then I could understand it.”
His understanding of the restaurant itself is in constant evolution. Along with his business partner, Robert Wilder, he’s developed a localized restaurant empire over the past two and a half years.
“I’m just the chef. I’m the smiling face. I know good food. I know how to train good people. [Wilder] was the one who made it all happen,” Rose humbly acknowledges. “He’s the real ‘Pasha’ – the man of importance. He’s the real thing. The big macher. A total mench.”
As our meal winds down and Rose sips his last few drops of Cab Sauv in between bites of an ice cream sandwich made with caramelized matzah and Manischewitz jelly, he becomes giddy and points when new dishes arrive at neighbouring tables. For him, the excitement of seeing his food on a plate has not worn off. He’s got a catering business in the works that will represent all three restaurants. He’s certain he won’t stop there.
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“We never want to perfect anything. We want to move and groove with the punches. We’ll stay true to the original, but never settle for the ordinary.”
Will you be taking a trip to Fat Pasha? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @ViewTheVibe.