Did Drake just open a restaurant named with a nod to his gal pal, Rihanna?
As a raucously ready-to-party Monday night scene materialized on Toronto’s King Street West, and a crowd good-looking enough to be the short-list casting-call for a CW show merried, a voice crept into my ear. “Do you know what Fring’s stands for?” it asked, referring to the just-baptized restaurant that we were standing in, a project that is a union of Canada’s most celebrated rapper and the biggest worldwide name in Canadian chefs, Susur Lee.
“Fries … and, um, onion rings?” I tentatively answered.
My Deep Throat smiled the smile of a swami, and told me, “It’s Drake’s nickname for Rihanna. Look it up.” Being a hardened investigative journalist, I did just that, right there and then. The word appears in tracks like Days in the East – apparently an ode to Rihanna. “It’s patois,” the Voice footnoted.
Another one of Drake’s gal pals showed in the flesh at the party not too long after. Yes, Serena Williams. Queen of the courts. A goddess with guns. Drake, lolling in the DJ booth, jumped on to the floor to greet her, as the room freeze-framed. Was it a tit-for-tat? Drake was at Serena’s New York Fashion Week debut just last week (sitting beside Anna Wintour); now, the tennis star had come to a restaurant opening in the town that her friend not so long ago re-branded as “The Six.”
“French fries?” a server bearing mini-towers asked the small mass around me. Nobody heard her. Nobody reached for, or was thinking of, carbs. They only had eyes for Serena and Drake.
Truth is, not many people were thinking about food at this ostensible restaurant opening (though the chips with salmon tartare did keep coming). Besides the high celebrity quotient – Jaden Smith was dancing in the VIP room as mom Jada Pinkett Smith looked on – the whole thing was a high-water mark of quintessentially Toronto multi-culti. Susur, the ponytailed maestro who basically created the now-quaint concept of “pan-Asian” in this town, had now joined forces with a half-Jewish Canadian uber-rapper. It was as far you can get from the Gordon Lightfoot Toronto of yesteryear.
When did this collab even happen? I asked two of Susur’s strapping sons, Levi and Kai (who appear to be the ones who’ll be holding down this particular Fring’s fort). They both told me that it had happened really fast, after they took over the space where Crush Wine Bar had once stood. Before this opening, it was all under wraps: There wasn’t even a Google footprint about this coming restaurant. Quite remarkable, in this age.
“Secrets are good,” Susur laughed when I broached the subject with him. Drake draped an arm over the celebrity chef as they gamely posed for pics and Lee reminisced about opening a new space on a Toronto strip where he was among the first. Back in 2000 – long before there was a Spoke Club, or a Buca, or a Blowfish on the now well-trod street – he opened the internationally acclaimed Susur in the hood. Now, a new incursion – with a little help from Drake.
The party stretched and stretched into night, though young Jaden was seen leaving – with Mom – sometime after 11 p.m. Some people, at least, had curfews.