Nothing 'going as planned' at Fabbrica: McEwan

Celebrity Chef Mark McEwan, recently selected to serve as a judge on Top Chef Canada, always has a couple of projects on the go. In his latest blog for PostCity.com, we asked him to dish the details on his new casual Italian restaurant, Fabbrica, set to open next month across from his grocery store at the Shops at Don Mills.

My new restaurant Fabbrica is scheduled to open at the end of August – a month away. Nothing is going as planned right now.

Just one example: the steel for my front window structure was supposed to arrive last week, but now it’s not coming till today or maybe Wednesday. I could go on. The list is long and frustrating. Things never go as planned. It’s construction hell and it makes me crazy. But I’ve been here before, many times. It’s always the same thing and it always works out in the end.

So I just keep trying to remind myself of that. And frankly that’s not hard, because the fact is that even if my teeth are clenched there is a lot that I’m excited about with this new project.

The Fabbrica design, which I commissioned from and worked on with Ralph Giannone (Giannone Petricone Associates), is coming together even better than I thought — and I loved it from the outset. It’s got exactly the right balance of industrial and modern, with Old World and comfortable, which is going to go a long way to giving the place a great atmosphere.

The semi-open kitchen is already anchored by a beautiful, hand-made, wood-burning pizza oven from Napoli that’s going to run at 700 degrees Fahrenheit and turn out our sensational pizzas in less than 90 seconds flat.

We’ve been trying those, and testing the other food too, and I think that it’s exactly the sort of the food the city needs. From the pizzas to the pastas and risottos, the house-made salumi, from the wood-oven roasted fish to the grilled and braised meats, everything on the menu is casual and rustic but rigorously authentic, and I know that customers are going to respond to that with a lot of enthusiasm.

For my part anyway, I’ve enjoyed the process of doing tastings with my chefs to finalize our dishes for the first Fabbrica menu more than any other aspect of the opening. After my latest meeting with the contractors this morning, holding my finger to the wind, I’d have to say that you’ll be enjoying the same food right after Labour Day at the absolute latest. I hope that you like it as much as I do.

Celebrity chef Mark McEwan is the force behind some of Toronto’s finest restaurants, including Bymark, North 44 and One Restaurant. His latest venture, McEwan, is a gourmet food market at the Shops at Don Mills.
 

Article exclusive to STREETS OF TORONTO