Boston's Hottest Chef Won't Slow Down, She's Opening Another New Restaurant Soon - Forbes

Fool's Errand is an "adult snack bar," mixing craft cocktails with curated bar snacks from around the globe, such as this very elevated take on English "toasties," a gourmet butter and Gruyere sandwich.

Emily Kan

Tiffani Faison just made the list of finalists for the prestigious 2019 James Beard Award’s “Best Chef Northeast,” for her four-year-old Pan-Asian eatery, Tiger Mama. This would be surprising if it was the first time, but’s it not (same thing happened last year). Faison, who was also named the city’s Best Chef by Boston Magazine in 2016, is used to these kind of accolades, but she is still a relatively new kid on the block here, though she’s moved fast and keeps growing. Based on past performance, that’s a very good thing for Boston diners and visitors.

Seven years ago, I visited Tiffani Faison’s first restaurant, Sweet Cheeks Q, and was not expecting much. Then I tried the life changing biscuits.

This was at a time when the popularity and geographic explosion of slow smoked barbecue had not reached the ubiquity it enjoys today, and talented chefs and restaurateurs were first trying to “upscale” BBQ, especially in northern cities that had traditionally lacked authentic ‘cue, with decidedly mixed results, like New York’s pioneering but ultimately disappointing Blue Smoke. I suspected Faison’s take at Sweet Cheeks would be more of the same - fancy, misguided smoked meat by an over trained chef.

I was totally wrong. The restaurant immediately won me over, and has deservedly been one of Boston’s most popular eateries ever since, winning over thousands of others. You can still read my original 2012 review here, and I still the feel same way about the out of this world biscuits, as I put it then:

OMG! Biscuits worth flying to Boston for, at Tiffani Faison's Sweet Cheeks Q.

Mike Diskin

“The problem with pronouncing anything the ‘best’ is that it implies having tasted every other version, which is impossible for any food or any type of restaurant. So when critics proclaim a place the best steakhouse, or the best pizza or as they like to do, the best resultant in the world, it is really shorthand for ‘the best I have tried so far.’ That’s not the case with this biscuit. This is the proto-biscuit, pure biscuit goodness, the very definition of biscuitness, and in short, it’s not just the best biscuit I have tried, it’s the best biscuit I can imagine - there is no room left for improvement. That is the crazy reason why I feel safe in my proclamation of ‘bestness,’ because I see no way it could get better.”

But a lot of things besides the biscuits (served in a bucket of four with amazing house honey butter) impressed me about Sweet Cheeks. Like how she sourced much better-quality meats than were common in the BBQ world, especially at that time, and continues to do so, with all natural pork belly, heritage breed pigs for pulled pork, drug free chicken, USDA Prime brisket, and so on and so on. The food is delicious, the sides a great mix of traditional, cool and creative, and the whole place is just fun, delicious and not seriousness. Consider the beer menu, which is divided into sections with something for every taste and budget, such as You Crafty, Hophead, Nice Cans, Big Cans and Hometown Heroes, the latter representing not just Boston but the epicenters of the BBQ world, the places Faison visited in her per-opening research, like Lonestar and Shiner Bock speaking for the Texas temples of BBQ she toured in spots like Lockhart.

Chef Tiffani Faison, a 2-time James Beard Best Chef Nominee, Boston Magazine Best Chef, and recipient of lots of other awards.

Mike Diskin

If Faison has simply stopped and stuck with Sweet Cheeks, hers would be a culinary success story. But it was just the beginning, and as she continues to find and fill sorely need food voids in Beantown, and is gearing up to open her fourth distinct genre, all of them in a one block stretch of one of the city’s most hip and happening neighborhood. In doing so, and thriving in an industry where even big names routinely fail, she has become Boston’s hottest chef.

What made a northern take on casual southern BBQ such an odd first choice was Faison’s fine dining background and tutelage under some of the world’s best-known chefs, starting with then red-hot Boston legend Todd English, for whom she traveled opening new ventures. Her 8-year whirlwind of kitchen self-discovery took her to the original and beloved Craigie Street by award winning chef Tony Maws, plus stops in San Francisco, Nantucket, a year as a private chef for Hollywood superstar Will Smith, and to Vegas for stints at the Wynn and in restaurants by Daniel Boulud and Alain Ducasse. It was when she was cooking in Vegas that she entered the first season of Top Chef, reaching the finals and finishing second, in an era when that was a new and distinct honor, before hundreds of chefs were churned through the lens of many seasons of various cooking competitions (and if you believe their publicists, every single of one of these participants over the years is now a self-proclaimed “celebrity chef”). When she taped Top Chef it was not even certain the nascent show would ever air, but it did, and became a big hit, so when she reached the last episode, everyone wanted to know what was next for the hot and newly discovered Tiffani Faison. What was next was Sweet Cheeks, which relied on a combination of gut intuition and perceived needs that has driven her business model ever since.

“There were lots of people who wondered what a fine dining chef was doing cooking barbecue,” she told me. “But my father was in the military, and wherever we moved, we were always smoking stuff, and we always had black eyed peas and all those sides we serve now, and when I got to Boston I really missed that, you couldn’t find it. I had every intention of doing my eponymous ‘look at me I’m an important chef’ place, but I couldn’t find the right space. I think it was the universe telling me something, because when I walked in here it hit me right away - I can’t open a fancy restaurant but it would be perfect for barbecue, and maybe there are other people in Boston who feel the way I do about it. And it turned out there were.” Enough so that seven years later it is still hard to get a seat at busy tines, and while other smokehouses have opened, Sweet Cheeks is easily Boston’s favorite.

So, what’s the next logical step for a self-made BBQ star? Southeast Asian cuisine of course.

“I never thought I’d get married, but when I met my now wife I knew she was the one, and I had this crazy idea that we should plunge in and go to Thailand for three or four weeks and see if it was real. It was, and I fell even more in love with her, but also with the food, the people and the culture. Spices, sweet, sour, herbs, it just blew me away, I’d never tasted anything like that, and when I got back I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it, so I started cooking it for ourselves. I kept going back, to Vietnam, Malaysia, and all though Thailand, northern, southern the islands, and that was it, we decided to give it a shot in Boston.”

Tiger Mama is a big and very cool Asian eatery with great ambiance and two bars - this is the smaller back one.

Mike Diskin

That shot was twice James Beard-nominated Tiger Mama, Faison’s second super popular restaurant in Boston’s suddenly hot Fenway neighborhood, near the stadium of the same name, the oldest one in Major League Baseball, which has made her joints a favorite of both fans and professional athletes. I recently ate at Tiger Mama and loved it, from the complex craft tiki cocktail list served in classic kitschy glassware to the stellar green papaya salad with long beans, peanuts and hot peppers to the complex marinated, smoked and fried duck. It’s a big place with a big menu so you can return again and again, and it has a neighborhood feel that is good for everything from drinks and apps at the bar to a blowout dinner. The pan Asian menu mixes Southeast Asian and Indian specialties, all with the same attention to sourcing detail found at Sweet Cheeks. It is a lively and vibrant space with dual bars, front and back, a lot of attention to cocktails, and tons of fun energy.

Next was something completely different: Fool’s Errand, Faison’s latest effort, just a few months old, is on the same block, taking advantage of the infrastructure at Sweet Cheeks and set in a tiny storefront space next door.

“When we’ve traveled in Europe, we’d often miss out on our dinner reservations because during the day we’d pop into these great little stand-up tapas bars, from Barcelona to London. I’ve wanted to do that in Boston for a while, but the economics didn’t make sense on its own. But with this little space we already have the liquor license, extra kitchen space, an office, and overflow refrigeration, all the things you need behind the scenes.” The very small one room space abutting Sweet Cheeks became the seat-less, all counter Fool’s Errand, serving cocktails and creative bar snacks. “If the space was twenty feet bigger, people would complain about having no seating, but it’s obvious we don’t have room so they’re okay with it.” Okay enough so that Eater Boston nominated her for 20189 Boston Chef of the Year based on the small but powerful effort.

I just visited Fool’s Errand, and in addition to a robust by the glass wine and craft cocktail list, they specialize in “elevated finger foods” and live up to their motto, “an adult snack bar.” They mix takes on croquettes, one of the most classic Spanish tapas, with fancy versions of England’s awesome pub snack, “toasties,” griddled sandwiches, from simple gruyere and butter to smoked beef tongue with hot peppers and raclette, or pastrami with brillat savarin. Small plates include sliced Benton’s famed Arkansas country ham and jam, along with numerous raw bar and cold seafood bar items. It packs a big punch in a little space, and you can certainly make a meal here, but it more of the absolutely perfect place to go before dinner or meet someone for an intimate drink. It’s a style of place almost completely lacking in this country, curating the world’s best bar snack comfort foods and elevating them, and it’s executed perfectly.

It's the food that got Tiger Mama and its chef nominated for back to back James Beard Awards - but don't miss the Tiki drinks!

Mike Diskin

To date, all of Faison’s concepts have been well received, and all were based on personal favorites she found lacking in Boston. But that’s not the case with her next effort, which heads into a culinary category the city is well known for, Italian.

“Italian food is not missing in Boston, but it was what I grew up in the industry cooking, first learning at Olive’s, then modern Italian at Rocca. It’s a piece of my life, and it’s a little bit self-indulgent, but I love this food and love cooking it.”

The new spot is scheduled to open early this summer, and will likely be the season’s hottest reservation. The name is Orfano, wich means Orphan. “Usually when you do Italian, it’s ‘what region?’ northern, southern, Ligurian? Orphans have no mother, and that’s what we love in Italian American food, no rules, sort of a dressed up, more feminine Rao’s (the country’s most iconic classic Italian America eatery, and one I have written about here previously). There will be steaks and chops, but it’s not a steakhouse, and lots of great pastas. Gnocchi will be front and center, I’ve missed it.”

Faison has never been one to shy away from challenge, and gnocchi is one of the toughest dishes for restaurants to do well - and very few of them do. In fact, when I am reviewing restaurants and see it on the menu, I always order it, because most places screw up, so it’s a great yardstick - if the gnocchi’s good, everything is likely to be good, and based on my past experiences with her eateries, I expect the gnocchi at Orfano to be good, and cannot wait to visit.

(More information or updates on the new eatery can be found through Faison’s restaurant group, Big Heart Hospitality).

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2019/04/08/bostons-hottest-chef-wont-slow-down-shes-opening-another-new-restaurant-soon/ 2019-04-08 11:01:00Z