![]() ![]() I love it now … but as a kid, it was Asian all the time.” So says the dude about a time long before he became further obsessed with an ancient cuisine, soaking up everything he could while travelling extensively through Southeast Asia later, doing a stint at DaiLo (where he met Braden Chong, a long-time collaborator who is his executive sous chef now at Mimi).Īnother touchstone from his childhood? Takeout menus. As a kid, I never wanted to eat Italian food. OK, and yeah: “I always wanted Asian food. “We would go to the Pearl on the Harbourfront every single weekend.” Hence the regular jaunts to Lee Garden and Wah Sing. With a dad who was working a lot and trying hard to be a single dad to a young boy, the eating out became a solace to both grief management. ![]() I recall all of us using restaurant dining and takeout as a bonding tool while she was sick. “My mom was also a big fan of dining out, specifically at Cantonese restaurants. While his brood was always a big dining-out family and his palate shaped by having older siblings - the next youngest of his three sisters is a decade older - what he hasn’t opened up about before is the role food played when he lost his mom at 11. He has no hesitation,” Schwartz started to say about the man who introduced him to chicken feet and more. “My dad is definitely my biggest influence in terms of how I eat. ![]() It is a moment that had him looking both backwards and forwards when I caught up with him. For him, February brings not just the relaunch of Mimi (complete with off-menu, if you-know-you-know lobster dish, pssssst) but also the swan song of his 20s. If every decade brings a few chefs who pique the cognoscenti in this city - the 2010s, for instance, brought us names like Cory Vitiello of the Harbord Room (RIP), Patrick Kriss of Alo fame and Chef Nuit from her medley of Thai restaurants - then Schwartz is reaping his own fanfare now. Chow-like sophistication (complete with bow-tied servers).įood-wise, it was a cornucopia, with dishes riffing on varied regions of China while giving the Instagram crowd something to post about with a four-foot belt noodle (presented tableside, then cut with gold scissors). #David schwartz movieCheck, check and check: its red-on-red bar a vibe right out of a Wong Kar-wai movie a spin on Mr. The response, particularly for the glamour-starved? Immediate. One of the inadvertent stars of the pandemic - his service Sunny’s Chinese became a talk-of-the-town delivery option, topping 11,000 subscribers in 2021 - his profile shot up further with another feat: reinterpreting his delivery-only idea as a bricks-and-mortar reality when he opened Mimi Chinese on Davenport Road (in the old Mistura space) last fall. And with it, a re-re-reboot for the most buzzed about younger chefs in rarefied circles these days, David Schwartz. As restaurants in Toronto rise again from their collective coma - indoor dining afoot once more, next week - the jockeying begins anew for one of the hottest reservations: a table at swanky new spot Mimi Chinese. ![]()
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