Top: Shabbat dinner at Fat Pasha with Rose and his mother Linda in 2019; Bottom: Rose and his Zaidy Simon catch a smallmouth bass at the cottage, 1979.
I think people see it like a comfort, to know that it’s there and it’s available, even if they’re not going to get it them- selves. That’s part of the holiday meals that people want the comfort for, too. They don’t make it on an average Friday night in November, but they want to know that it’s available to them somewhere. It’s like Israel, right? You don’t have to make aliyah to know that it’s there in case you have to make aliyah . Right. The chopped liver is definitely one of those dishes. Gefilte fish, no one really gives a shit about one way or the other. It can be there. We’re not going to sell very much of it. I do think gefilte fish is one of the best things to put in between a toasted buttered bagel. I love the High Holidays for that. There are definitely some of those dishes that you’re right about, that you just want to know that it’s there. As somebody who grew up kosher, who eats kosher regularly, who had this food all my life growing up, I love this food and I love being able to go back for it. But I don’t always want it. And so when it comes to the High Holidays and I’m mak- ing a big meal with a lot of guests, I don’t want to go to the classics, but people ex- pect the classics, and I don’t know how to balance those two. You’re coming to my house for Rosh Hashanah, you may not be getting matzo ball soup, or a bris- ket. I don’t know how to play with that for the people that want that and those that are done with traditional food. Tradition- al food doesn’t feel ambitious, and I feel stuck sometimes. I totally agree. I’m divorced, so when it comes to the High Holidays I’m stuck— sorry Mom!—eating the exact same meal two days in a row. What we’ve started to do—and I started to do it at the restau- rants as well—is that one night will be very much Ashkenazi, and then the other night will be much more Sephardic. It could be rice and lentils and chickpeas. I crave that and want that. n
I’ve always said that the original slow food movement is Shabbat dinner, be- cause it takes hours to prepare and you get to enjoy it free of any screens and dis- tractions. Each dish begets another dish, right? Even when it came to brisket or tzimmes or what- ever, you started the night before the Sab- bath and just forget about it in in the oven. Even the schmaltz: every single part of that chicken is used up. How much chicken fat can you eat? Let’s throw it in this bread over here and put it in the kishke casing. Nothing was wasted. Rosh Hashanah feels like prime time for Anthony Rose. Do you get questions from home cooks, or people coming up to you and saying, “I want to make this meal at home?” I used to get a lot of those questions. “How can I cook this? Can you send me the recipe for that?” I do find after COVID, more and more people are really just going back to the basics—they want the gefilte fish and they want the chopped liver. Liver is a funny one because every time we put it on the menu, people say it’s awesome. I want everyone to eat this, but when we put it on the menu, the same five people come in every three months to order it. Then we take it off the menu and you get that one guy every week who comes in and says “What the fuck? What happened to the liver?” I’m like: “Well, you say you want it, but you don’t come and get it.”
You’re like Chabad, but for herring.
You know, Fat Pasha was never supposed to be truly Middle Eastern. When we opened it, Ottolenghi had just come out with Jerusalem , so I was thinking, “This is what we should do.” But as we [kept] getting closer to opening the restaurant, I’m like, wait a second. That’s not the Jewish I grew up with at all. So that’s where we threw the latkes at it and the bris- ket and the hot dogs and the salami—that’s what I understood as Jewish. Eating is all my family does, right? It’s not only the Sabbath dinners, but every day of the week. We’re al- ways together, we’re always having fun. And I very much like to make fun of myself and my Jewishness for that matter as well.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
26
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator