Toronto chef steps away from fine dining scene to open new casual restaurant
A Toronto chef who cut his teeth in fine dining restaurants across North America is venturing out to do something totally different.
Chef Barbode Soudi says that, for the majority of his 20-year tenure working in kitchens across the continent, fine dining was always the plan.
"I guess my first job was Crush Wine Bar, he said. "But I think one of the most pivotal moments of my career was when I did six months, when I was young, at Eigensinn Farm under Michael Stadtlander."
From there, stints at The French Laundry in Napa, Toronto's Lucien, Nota Bene, Black Hoof, and San Francisco's Quince all added feathers to his cap until, ultimately, he returned to the local fine dining scene at Actinolite and Alo.
"I was always trying to work for the best places and best chefs that I could," Soudi explained.
Eventually, he rose in the ranks from sous chef to executive sous chef and, eventually, chef de cuisine at Alo. Then, the pandemic hit. After that, Soudi's beloved father, Mozaffar Soudi, who everyone called Mozy, passed away.
"That was obviously a pivotal moment in my life and my career, and it pushed me also to pursue my own path now that it was time, because I had the motivation that I felt not only through that experience of losing my father, but him always wanting to see me build something of my own," Soudi says.
The initial plan was to open a fine dining spot of his own, called Sima, after his mother, but lease agreements and financing consistently fell through. Discouraging, sure, but the obstacles also forced Soudi to get flexible with his dream.
Sima went on the back burner, though Soudi still dreams of opening it eventually, and he, instead, looked toward something entirely different: a casual, quick-service restaurant serving charcoal-grilled chicken and kebabs, called Mozy, after his father.
"A lot of my peers and others see my kebabs on Instagram, and say, 'you need to just open a kebab shop. I don't know what you're doing, trying to do something fancy that the city, it's already hard enough to open restaurants in Toronto,' you know, especially something fine dining, and I was always like, 'Ah, you don't get it.'"
Necessity breeds innovation, as they say, and, pretty soon, Soudi began singing a different tune.
It also helped that, where opening Sima posed what seemed like endless challenges, Mozy's, Soudi says, all fell into his lap.
Greg Bourolias, of Burger Drops fame, is a close friend of Soudi's, and Soudi says that the two would regularly joke about Soudi opening his own place next door should then-tenant Liberty Shawarma drop out.
"Then, he messaged me, literally on Christmas Day, saying 'Merry Christmas, bro, the tenant wants out,'" and just like that, Mozy's was a-go.
While a quick-service charcoal grill shop is, by all accounts, a divergence from the majority of Soudi's culinary experience, he views the new venture as an opportunity to flex his creativity nonetheless.
Expect succulent, juicy kebabs and, the real star of the show, charcoal-grilled chicken, not served in a way that pays exact homage to any specific regional cuisine, but to Soudi's own masterful ideas.
"This whole concept, for me, is focused first on being delicious, but second on I choose creativity over authenticity," Soudi tells us.
"I'm not trying to be overly reflective of any one particular culture, so that gives me more flexibility and freedom to create a unique product where I can say, you know, 'this is a skewer inspired by here. This is a skewer inspired by here. And this chicken is a hybrid between a Peruvian process of rotisserie chicken, a Lebanese process, and Portuguese.'"
While the restaurant is a canvas for Soudi's culinary creativity, it will still pay ample homage to its namesake, Soudi's father, Mozy.
"I have certain memories of my dad around kebab, you know, and on a personal level, those are going to live with me forever, and those are things that I like to reflect on and laugh," Soudi says.
Mozy, Soudi says, was a self-declared kebab expert, keeping an ever-changing ranking of local kebab shops in his mind that changed visit by visit.
"We would go to Iranian kebab spots, and we would order our chicken or beef kebabs. And he would tell them, like, 'Please don't cook it too much. Don't overcook it,' you know. And they're like, 'Yeah, no worries, no worries.' But then he would be literally standing over the counter, staring at the guy cooking it, and constantly telling him, 'No, no, that's enough, that's enough. Don't overcook it. Don't overcook it,'" Soudi said.
"I would be so embarrassed that I would just immediately wait outside until he came to the car."
Even the shop's black and orange branding pays homage to Mozy. Soudi tells us that Mozy was scarcely, if ever, seen wearing anything on his feet other than his ubiquitous black Reebok shoes; no matter if he was heading into work or to a wedding.
"He was an amazing dad to me," Soudi said.
"He was very personable. To all of our friends, all my brother's friends, he was the cool dad. I think it's really his spirit that's going to be in the place, trying to try to embody that in our hospitality."
Soudi is still deep in the process of renovating Mozy's eventual home in Liberty Village, so the restaurant isn't due to open for a few months yet, but he tells us that he hopes the restaurant will open its doors before the end of the year.
If you ask us, Mozy's can't come soon enough.
Mozy’s Charcoal will be located at 114 Atlantic Ave.
@barbode/Instagram
