Where all the tables are chef’s tables
Leave it to a kid born in Africa and raised on Indian food — growing up in Canada in an Ismaili Muslim family — to give the town a shot of new-school Israeli food?
“We interpret modern Israeli cuisine as a melting pot,” Hanif Harji, its owner, was telling me this week when I stopped by to see the restaurant, revving up with the backstage scurrying of a small theatre company, on the cusp of opening night.
Outside on Portland St., just off an animated stretch of King St., the Shook sign was being hung, the whir of drills colliding with the hiss of the woodburning hearth inside. A wall of enchanting green potted plants at the doorway was part of a mini-greenery shop and retail space that sits in tandem with the airy 80-plus-seat restaurant (in case you need to need to take some emergency za’atar home).
Pointing to a super-cute, open-early takeout counter, Harji continued on about his vision for the food: “No boundaries ... our intention was to explore ancient spices.”
And not just do that — borrowing liberally from Persian, Palestinian and Turkish influences — but do it “without any gas lines” (see, again, that woodburning hearth/charcoal grill) and do it as a restaurant that sways exclusively to a vegetarian palate.
A tall order? Hey, Harji has been here before. Do not let the soft-spoken exterior fool you. With Shook bringing the number of restaurants he has founded to a grand total of 18 — 18! — what’s long stood out to me about him is the breadth of concepts he has taken on, and how many of them read as a Short History of Toronto Hot Spots over the last 15 years or so.
Blowfish — of-the-moment, panAsian — got things going. Later came now-gone hipster-baits like Nyood on Queen West and Kultura on King East. A further deepening arrived with the Spanish-immersed Patria, and the Lebanese-leaning Byblos, coinciding with him taking on the job as CEO of IconINK inside the sweeping Toronto group, Icon Legacy Hospitality. Estia. La Société. Weslodge. Akira Back. Mira. His list goes on.
“People ask if there is a chef’s table. I tell him: all the tables are chef’s tables,” he went on to say, pointing now to a wide-open kitchen that not only gives an eye-level view of chefs working their magic, but is designed in a way that the demarcation between kitchen and dining room is moot. It actually reminded me of a couple of restaurants I got to check out in Beirut a few years ago — a vibe akin to being in someone’s home.
“No stainless steel!” pronounced executive chef Ben Heaton, joining us as we snagged a table. He stated it with the intensity that reminded me of Faye Dunaway decrying “No wire hangers!” in Mommie Dearest, but he meant that there was a real mission to make the cooking space non-industrial-kitchenfeeling.
Intrigued by their influences, it came as little surprise to me that Shook was definitely inspired by a visit Heaton and Harji made to Zahav in Philadelphia (that James Beard Foundation Awardwinning restaurant that served me one of my favourite meals ever in the U.S.) as well as all things Ottolenghi (the famous London chef whose Middle East-forward cookbooks have made him a star the world over). Shall we eat? Harji motioned. The salads, when they came, were inspired and boredom-averse — dill, mint, pistachio, feta, green chili, go. The hummus, meanwhile, immediately made a case for itself as the best in town — a dreamy, creamy number that is nothing like the pasty supermarket variety — zingingly seasoned and with just the right knock-knock of crunch. The shakshouka, meanwhile, come in two, life-affirming varieties — a green and a red.
Everything — especially the bulbous pita breads — came with a smoky depth, which got us into an extended conversation about grills. The one at Shook was made specially, by hand, by a guy in Orangeville who does just this for high-end restaurants. You have to book him. It took three weeks. Moreover, the grill never really stops spewing, and you gotta change the filter every day. “Its like a pet!” I interjected. “It is like a pet,” Heaton laughed. “You have to feed it … you have to love it ...”
Asked about the resto name, Harji told me it was meant to be a play on the Arab word for bazaar or marketplace — souk. Buzzy and bustling is what they were going for, yes — congruent, it seemed to me, with the whole culinary ethos of the place: strewn from different traditions, but definitely its own thing. Do pass the halloumi, darling.
Hearing Harji rhapsodize about food — he tells me he tastes every dish in every restaurant, and at Shook was along for the ride when they experimented with 30 different flours before deciding on one! — I ask if his passion for food has ever levelled off.
If anything, he replies, “it’s more” — there has been a deepening as he has travelled, and learned to really understand various cuisines.
Get him going further, and it is like unspooling a reel of starry vignettes, given the role that so much of his restaurants have played during TIFF, and more. A standout memory for him: watching Bill Murray dancing the night away at Patria with Harji’s wife and his uncle at one of many TIFF parties held there over the years (the very locale where, just last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped by to see Ryan Gosling at the after-party for First Man).
Also memorable: Michael Shannon eating dinner at the bar at Byblos — a restaurant that’s also lured out Salma Hayek and John Travolta — three nights a week while he was in Toronto shooting.
Going back a decade-plus, Harji likewise cannot forget a party, held at Blowfish, when “Nic Cage showed up an hour early and smoked a cigar with me in the patio.”
Part of my own city reel: a birthday party I remember being at Nyood for NBA star, and then Toronto favourite son, Chris Bosh. Talk about scenes of Raptors past! If I recall correctly, Drake — then only at the beginning of his fame — showed up to pay homage to Bosh.
My own life has intersected so much with Harji restaurants that I summon up the memory that I actually hosted the first party at Blowfish way back when — a significant birthday bash for moi, thrown in the middle of an ice storm.
Like Harji, I am also a kid from Africa reared on Indian food and so, naturally, I was curious when he’s going to finally open a cool downtown restaurant based on cuisine from the subcontinent. Surely, he must have thought of it.
Absolutely, he confirmed — it’s likely his next project, and possibly in about 18 months’ time (the usual gestation time for his restaurants). “But it will,” he said with a grin, “be Indian-ish.”