Josh many Josephson’s loves
Toronto’s ‘non-stop talking Michelin Guide to the city’ has finally found true happiness with his fifth partner, Elaine Lewis. ‘They aren’t married,’ says one social pundit. ‘Maybe that’s the trick.’
A successful hedonist knows that indulgence is sweetest when served with a diet of self-discipline. Dr. Josh Josephson is a man of voracious appetites: multiple-divorced eye doctor about town, insatiable gourmand and oenophile who will fly anywhere for food; wily art collector of broad scope and palette; opera patron; investor in technology aimed at medical breakthroughs.
The CEO of the family business, Josephson Opticians, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, travels the world mixing international medical-standards consultancy work with eyewear-fashion trade shows and intricately curated, mindblowing food tourism.
Josephson, who turns 70 this year, is known for the name on the door of the Bay-Bloor flagship of the independent eyewear chain. But increasingly his mark on the city has come from his singular (and self-nominated) role as the most passionate foodie in this city notable for its critical mass of food fans.
But back to his restraint: For the past two weeks, as is his recent regime, Josephson has been in foodmartyr mode: breakfasts of joyless chia seed and tap-water smoothies, a glut of greens and “nothing with a face or a mother.” A workout fiend, Josephson could eat with his customary impunity well into his 60s without penalty, but staying trim now requires sacrifice.
The moment of truth: Josephson is sitting at Splendido, and to say the staff is fussing over him would be a hilarious understatement, as waves of foodrunners rain the table with increasingly over-the-top omakase surprises. Josh Josephson is a very good customer, and eateries from this gastronomic peak on Harbord St. to tapas joints on Ossington Ave. to sushi outposts in the deepest entrails of Etobicoke have all cottoned on. “I met Mark McEwan way back when he had Pronto,” Josephson says. “He came out of the kitchen to see the skinny guy who ate three portions of everything.”
There is groaning over melting lobster and umami-rich maple salmon. My notes through dinner are not just food stained, they are punctuated by Josephson’s gleeful “Unnnnhs” and “Ooohs” and “Yes, Yesses!” as Splendido’s chef, Victor Barry, pushes Josephson’s buttons with clockwork regularity through 18 courses. The fast is most assuredly well broken.
With little prodding, the good doctor begins the tale of his life. As his dear friend, divorce lawyer Harold Niman says, “He’s a legend in his own mind. No matter what the subject, he has an opinion. Mind you, it is never contrived.” Josephson begins in a linear fashion, with his first week as a freshman at University of Pennsylvania, circa 1963. Now, most of us spent that initial moment of adult freedom hurling the froshy proceeds of Alcool and Kool-Aid behind the bleachers. Not Josephson, whose first act was to take exactly one-quarter of his term’s spending money ($18.50) to buy a spectacular Italian vintage Conti meant to be cellared. And just like that, he laid it down for a decade, until it was ready. “It was impulsive,” he says of the purchase with a glint, knowing the act was anything but. “I drank it on New Year’s Eve 1973, with David Mirvish and our wives at the time.” He and Mirvish used to walk to school together at Forest Hill Collegiate.
It is impossible to tell Josephson’s story without hovering on the word “wives.” Hitched for a brief time at 20, Josephson married his second wife, Jane Tanenbaum, with whom he had two daughters. He later married Barbara Caffrey; together they started the Cookbook Store on Yonge St. to celebrate their shared passion for food tomes. He has warm words to say about these women central to his life. He says less about his fourth wife, interior designer Michelle Hanna, with whom his split was publicly less amicable. Talk around town was about their His and Her fridges being a poor sign for compatibility with an extreme foodie.
Josephson gallantly refuses to throw mud, which is made easier by the fact he is now so happy. For it is his fifth partner, Elaine Lewis, whom society-watchers feel is the rare find, a fit at last for Josephson.
“They aren’t married,” says social pundit Shinan Govani. “They don’t live together. Maybe that is the trick. I find Elaine like Sally Field,” he says of the slight-of-frame proud grandmother, who does indeed resemble her celebrity twin. “She is perky and chipper and warm and irresistible. And she is bemused by Josh’s intense enthusiasms. She doesn’t try to change him. Quite a lesson to us all, really.”
In the sitting room of his Rosedale home, Josephson and Lewis are clearly smitten. He looks at her like a bespectacled puppy who has won a lottery. It has been a long road to this chapter: the pair met in 1952 at Ce- darvale Community School in Forest Hill, but didn’t become a couple until 2006. (There was a near-miss when Josephson was urged to go on a setup with her before he began the relationship that ended in his fourth waltz down the aisle, but it seems the puzzle pieces were not yet in place.)
“In your 60s, at this point you come with so much baggage, you become who you are because of what you have been through,” Lewis says. “Love is about humour and respect. You can’t lose sight of who you are to fill a void in someone else’s life. I think you have to let a lot of things fall by the wayside.”
Lewis prefers dessert to dinner, but takes pleasure in Josephson’s enthusiasms.
“She tolerates me,” he says. “She is very patient with the eating thing. When we travel, sometimes I book three lunches. That is a lot of food to watch me eat!”
His zeal can make him seem pushy: His habit of ordering for the table was the biggest hurdle for Lewis to get past. “I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to!” is Josephson’s answer. He has also changed his restaurant selections to suit her preferences. Left to his own devices, he would chase dumplings deep into the heart of Markham strip malls, forgoing the niceties. “You can’t eat atmosphere,” is a frequent comment. Elaine chimes in like clockwork. “And I love atmosphere.”
Josephson closed his own large Yorkville practice, which was highly influential in the ’70s and ’80s, in 1991. In 2001, he took over the firm founded in 1935 by his father, also an optometrist (and later run by his late mother, Merryl Josephson Conway, a formidable businesswoman who died in 2010 at age 90).
“We have a culture where I don’t micromanage,” he says. “Josephson’s has done well despite the eroding market. After all, we now have the phenomenon where people who don’t actually need glasses wear them!”
Josephson doesn’t boast a huge glasses wardrobe, preferring the round Robert Marc frames that flatter his colouring, his red hair mellowed to grey tinted the palest orange.
The fashion side of his business is less compelling for him: It is the science he is jazzed by. “Anything he can do to help people is what he is interested in,” Niman says. Josephson is also invested in, and is a director of, No No Inc., “the clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of common health disorders with unmet needs, including stroke, traumatic brain injury and pain.”
He joined that project in 2005 with longtime pal Mike Tymianski, a researcher with University Health Network. As Niman puts it, this passion project fits into both sides of Josephson. “It a hybrid concerned with medical miracles and the possibility of being financially profitable.”
Enjoying the fruits of his labour, these days Josephson and Lewis travel extensively, but increasingly crave their time together in Florida, where finally Josh can “be happy doing nothing,” so long as he has Lewis by his side. “There is nothing better in life,” he says, “than sitting on the terrace with her at 5 or 6 with a drink. And holding hands.”
Still, Lewis is firm she likes the sta- tus quo: “There is simply no way I’m going to be the fifth Mrs. Josephson!”
Govani calls Josephson the “Pied Piper” of the city’s amateur food scene. He writes a blog on his Cookbook store website (the bricks-andmortar shop closed last year, but the chef and author events component remains. “But it isn’t the blog that is the source of his influence. It is that he is an old-fashioned patron, a tastemaker in the true sense,” Govani says. “He sends out signals into the right ears. He puts behinds in restaurant seats.”
For the record, Josephson has a strict policy on paying his way. “They want to comp me, but I can afford to pay. Besides, I don’t want to be beholden. I’m independent.”
Josephson can often be seen snapping what has become in our Instagram world the dreaded food shot. “I love to share the experience of food with friends, and then I want to share it with more people, to spread the word. They have to be able to see what I’m talking about!”
Perhaps the most frequent beneficiary of his wonder is Edulis, the Niagara St. outpost of husband-andwife chef team Michael Caballo and Tobey Nemeth. Josephson’s own blog reads: “I just want to establish that I have no shares or financial interest in Edulis,” before going on to appreciate the juxtaposition of complex food with casual setting.
If he were a superhero, Caballo would dub him the “Roaming Gastronome.” Josh has come in over time with different people, almost as if he were introducing the place. He is one of those customers who makes you rethink the nature between a cook and the people we serve, what we each bring to the relationship.”
Josephson books his meals many months in advance, and plans his medical and fashion convention travels around where he wants to eat next, be it Japan or Finland or checking in on the gastronomic capitals. “I do travel less now because I want to build in visits to my grandson in Vancouver,” Josephson says.
Post-prandial group photos of arcane international food societies line the walls to the basement of Josephson’s home. Wandering through, he points out a lifetime as a collector. He had an important collection of black and white photographs, from “back before people seriously collected photography.” He kept a few photographs by Alfred Stieglitz and street photographer Weegee that held personal meaning, and traded the bulk of his collection to pal Ron Kimel, the developer, in return for property.
“There is a line between being attached to a collection and knowing when to move on,” says Josephson, who has held on to Jack Bush and Tony Scherman paintings, as well as pre-Columbian pottery, some nifty first editions, some Tsung and Han Dynasty pottery, as well as some classics of modern furniture. Josephson also has the remnants of a passion for toy soldiers and maps from his favourite historical cartographers. Which gives pause: How many among us have favourite historical cartographers?
We tend to use the term “Renaissance man” as short form to convey someone with a lot of interests. All of Josephson’s friends invoke the label when talking about him; interestingly he calls them all RMs too. They are a successful bunch, and I’m starting to think the best definition of Renaissance people in general is those who spend their money with great aplomb.
Because you can’t eat aplomb.