But have you tried the herring? Chef and restaurateur Anthony Rose talks with Avi Finegold about tradition, family, and what’s on the menu for Rosh Hashanah
PHOTOGRAPH BY NAOMI HARRIS FOR THE CJN
I want to start with this cocktail I’m hav- ing, because it would not exist without the Manischewitz vermouth [from your Last Schmaltz Cookbook ]. You were the first one that was like, “When life gives you Manischewitz, do something fun with it,” so I have to thank you because it’s be- come the backbone of so many cocktails. You know, it’s funny with the Manischewitz vermouth: we’ve used it, then we haven’t used it. I actually think it’s one of the more cool recipes in the book. Just recently, I started to dive back into the vermouth-mak- ing at Fat Pasha [Rose’s restaurant in mid- town Toronto]. We have it on the menu and in the big barrel on the bar. Now we sneak some other things into there, like a little bit of whiskey here and there. It’s amazing that you can just tweak it. Yes! If I’m running out of brandy, I’ll throw in some rum. I’ll throw in some bourbon instead. I’ll put in extra peppercorns if I want, depending on what I’m thinking about doing with it. Recipes are suppos- ed to be like that, easy and breezy, you know?
mom’s brisket, but we also made our own bacon and had pork fried rice, which is rem- iniscent of my Jewish upbringing. I think that the reviewer kind of questioned it. And in my very young, stupid mind, I said that I felt like kosher laws were antiquated. I’m just doing what feels right to me. I shouldn’t have said the first part, [that] they’re meant to be antiquated. They’re not laws that move with time—they’re laws that just stayed in time, which is kind of beautiful as well. But my dad called me and he was really disappointed in me for what I said. It didn’t change how I cooked, but it certainly changed how I talked about it. From what I’ve seen from your presence online and the cookbook, and from what people tell me, of all the nouveau Jewish or nouveau Israeli chefs you feel like the most Jewish to me: there’s this sense that the food is definitely Jewish, that a Shabbat meal can break out at any time, because what you care about is bringing people together and celebrations. We have a line at the restaurant where we don’t take ourselves very seriously, but we take what we do very seriously. I will walk around the restaurant on any given day and wish everyone a Good Shabbos . I will stand at Schmaltz all day long; even though one out of 50 people order herring, I’m just giv- ing it out and telling people, “You got to try it. You’re probably not going to like it, but your grandparents did.”
things totally skipped a generation. I think that Fat Pasha is just trying to be as cheeky as possible with these ingredients and Ju- daism in general, right? And just having fun with it, not being serious. So, two questions then based on that. First, and with no judgement on my part: What’s your personal relationship with the idea of kosher? Was there a point in your life when you were kosher-ish as a family, or was it always like this thing and then you had to make this break and de- cide, I’m doing this? It wasn’t necessarily a break. Growing up, I think our kosher was the same as a lot of people that I knew, which was Chinese food equals kosher. At home, we wouldn’t have cheeseburgers. We wouldn’t have milk and meat. We didn’t have two dishwashers or anything. But even though we were Conserv- ative, from a young age, I wasn’t [kosher]. I do remember the first time I had bacon, the first time I had a ham and cheese sand- wich—they were all very family-related. It was certainly taboo, but it wasn’t taboo enough. Then when I moved to New York from San Francisco I—literally, for whatever reason— just went whole hog, just dove into it. The most interesting kosher story—and I actually feel really badly about this one— but when I first got reviewed with [the now closed restaurant] Rose and Sons, the menu was really weird to many, because I could have matzah ball soup on the menu and my
Exactly, yeah!
The next one I’m working on is a Slivovitz. I think the important part is that there’s so many of these kinds of Jewish old school types of things that are decidedly just not cool at all, right? Whether it’s the Manis- chewitz or Slivovitz or herring, a lot of these
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