I have been down this restaurant-building road before. I arrived in Paris with a holiday visa and an opportunity to run a kitchen in a new restaurant. It was so new that I helped build it for the next four months. It won’t be like this with Union. It just can’t be, or I might as well call it quits right now.
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Down and out in Paris, not Toronto
This stove better be worth it
I just bought a brand new 48-inch flat-top grill with two ovens underneath. I have never cooked on a flat-top before, which makes me nervous, but if it keeps me from getting bogged down and freaking out waiting for pans to heat up or burners to light in an open kitchen, it’s worth every penny. I figure, at the very least, it will help me keep the food moving and bouncing out of there simple and clean.
State of the Union
Now, the state of the Union: boarded-up windows, brick walls, high ceiling with beams running down it. There is nothing resembling a kitchen—just a window and a back door that leads to a patio that is (again) full of junk we pulled out of the basement. But the patio is the best thing I have ever seen and the only thing I feel good about right now. It is an oasis. There is a huge, leafy tree back there that keeps the place cool and breezy on the hottest, muggiest days. I was downstairs with a mask on, shovelling up the last of the crap to be hauled out, when my mother came by with her best friend to have a look. Her friend walked around and kept saying, “You poor, poor boy. You are so brave.” And then she’d perk up and say, “Well, I feel so much better about the work I am doing on my house now!” Some days, I swear I am barely hanging on—I think I’ve got to start cutting off the family visits. The place is strong and simple and made out of brick and it’s going to be fine—at least that’s what I tell myself. But when you’re pulling up a floor in the basement and finding dirt underneath, it makes you kind of anxious.
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Bringing something different to Toronto
Last time, I mentioned how I was going to invite some of the Ontario farmers I’ve met for a meal made with their own food. Events like that are very useful in developing specific dishes—especially now that I have to do it for the menu at Union. For my last year in Paris, I cooked Stadtländer-inspired dinners for the Parisian elite in beautiful apartments all around the Left Bank and Neuilly. I had a really amazing waitress from Sweden named Anna; she would sing “Happy Birthday” in Swedish, and it sounded just like a German marching song. We had a lot of success; we got a couple standing ovations and, one time, after the raw tuna–fried plantain–foie gras burger made its debut, we left the apartment with 10 pissed French people chanting “Teo! Teo! Teo!” You could still hear them from the courtyard.
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Cooking local, eating well
When I think about the food that I want to slide onto the tables at Union, I always come back to the same place: the Rungis market in Paris. I worked there for a while, buying all kinds of birds and big côtes de veau, sweetbreads, mushrooms and vegetables for a company that sent it to restaurants in Dublin. Rungis is the biggest market in the world—it looks like a massive air base with hangars full of vegetables and meat. The best part about it was buying the birds and game, picking supplies from boxes packed with ducks with red ribbons and heads crowned with feathers; unskinned rabbits tucked in rows in boxes; fat, feathered capons; and milk-white Bresse chickens with blue feet and red heads—like the French flag. And right in the middle of all this chaos is an elegant glassed-in café stuffed with bruising French guys in bloodstained white jackets drinking rosy liqueurs and eating steak frites at six in the morning. It’s beautiful.
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A Toronto restaurant in the making
There is a place in Paris called Le Petit Fer à Cheval. It’s a beautiful, old little bistro with a marble-top horseshoe bar in the front and a dining area in the back. When I lived in Paris, I spent a lot of time leaning on that bar. I drank demis and looked out onto the street, watching pretty women ride past on bicycles, and thought about having my own place—my own restaurant. I wanted it to be that comfortable, that relaxed. It’s now seven years later, and I finally have my own place. Almost. I have the real estate (on Ossington Avenue just north of Queen Street West) and the name: Union. And even though the space is a shambles now, by opening night—September 15, if I am blessed—it will be perfect.
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