Toronto bakery famous for its Jamaican patties shuts down again
A Toronto bakery known for its Jamaican patties just closed down despite a recent boost in popularity — but it's not goodbye forever.
Even if the name means nothing to you, and even if you don't consider yourself a patty lover (in which case, your Toronto resident card will be revoked post haste), there's a high likelihood that you have been exposed to the spicy, flaky creations of Fahmee Bakery.
If you've ever travelled through Bathurst, Warden or Islington subway stations, for example, and been immediately blasted with the scent of buttery pastry crust and scotch bonnet, you know exactly what Fahmee Bakery is all about, regardless of whether you succumb to the olfactory temptation and pick up a commute snack or not.
The bakery, which was founded in Scarborough in the 1970s, is perhaps best known for supplying the aforementioned subway stations with their fair share of fuel, but also sells them fresh out of its brick-and-mortar location.
With legend status (and a regular wholesale deal with the TTC's Bakery on the Go locations) sufficiently secured, one could assume that owner Faiz Abdella's ticket to easy street is a sure thing. Reality couldn't be further off.
In 2022, Fahmee's original Scarborough location suffered a devastating fire and, damaged beyond repair, was forced to close down permanently.
Luckily, a few years before, Fahmee had opened a secondary location on the other side of the city at 222 Lansdowne, which, following a short stint working out of a ghost kitchen, became Fahmee's home base.
Now, according to a video posted to Fahmee's Instagram on Monday, Aug. 25, there's another big change for Fahmee Bakery underway, and it starts with the permanent closure of the Lansdowne location, despite Abdella’s admission that the location has recently been "the busiest II'veever seen since we came here."
Not anticipating the recent surge in business, Abdella explains, he put Lansdowne up for sale a few months ago and, recently, the sale finally closed, along with Fahmee's west end chapter, but it's not all bad news; the bakery is returning to its roots and reopening in Scarborough.
"We won't be in the West End, but we do wish to come back in the future," Abdella says in the video, explaining that he always believed Fahmee deserved a presence in the area and, given how hard the community has shown up for the bakery of late, he was right.
Sure, the back-and-forth is exhausting to keep up with (we can only begin to imagine how Abdella feels), but, as long as our subway rides are still stocked with Fahmee bakery patties, we're happy campers.
"I just feel like I got to bring it back to the beginning, kind of where I started, and that's Scarborough, and I made a mistake of trying to do too many things at once, and it almost killed me," Abdella says.
"So now I'm just going to focus on one thing, make sure it's as good as it can be, and move on to the other thing."
Abdella has yet to reveal when, exactly, the new Scarborough location will be up and running, but, according to his video, it should be soon.
In any event, to quote Abdella's own words, "this isn't a goodbye. It's kind of like a see you later."
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