Celebrating Local Businesses

EDITED BY: GRACE CAMERON, EDITOR & PUBLISHER OF JAMAICANEATS MAGAZINE @JAMAICANEATSMAGAZINE AND PHOTOS BY SELINA MCCALLUM @SHOTBYSELINA

Celebrating Local Business Owners

Jimson Bienenstock Co-owner, HotBlack Coffee, 245 Queen St W.

In the early 1990s Jimson Bienenstock moved to France to learn French. He lied his way into a bartending job in Paris…and “I liked it.” He ended up managing the bar, his French got better and over 15 years he helped to launch Foster’s beer and to set up more than a dozen different bars in France. He remembers one bar, in particular, where he created the space and mood for women to enjoy drinking beer. One night someone started dancing on the table, and since Jimson didn’t stop them from dancing, it caught on, and became a “thing” that is still going.” In France, Jimson - who has a master’s degree in molecular biology and worked in the sugar industry in places like Jamaica - discovered his magic touch of bringing people together. “I enjoyed building karma. I enjoyed the sounds, setting up the music, the lighting, meeting the people, setting the menu and pricing. I really enjoyed that component of creating something cool and fun,” he says. He has applied this knack of creating spaces for human interaction to his HotBlack Coffee shop. His approach is to carve out comfortable spaces that put service, fun and conversation at the core. At the Queen Street West café, the indoor tables are low, patio tables are oversized and Wi-Fi is not readily available to customers. The furniture design and the refusal to hand out the Wi-Fi password to customers are deliberate, he says. Indoor tables built close to the ground make it less convenient for working on a laptop and outsized patio tables force patrons to share space and thereby interact with each other, he explains. It’s not that Jimson and partner Momi Kishi have anything against folks playing or typing away on their laptop or working in café spaces, “it’s just that we don’t want to be an office,” he says. “We want to be a hub for human interaction. We created the kind of place we would want to go to. Yes, our coffee is ethically sourced and we have great tasting products, but it wasn’t just about making money.”

Article written in March 2022. Jimson (Bienenstock) passed in May 2022.

May his memory live on through his love for Queen West and great coffee.

HotBlack Coffee which opened in 2016 has established itself as a hotspot for great coffee, espresso and baked goods as well as a place that encourages patrons to talk to each other because putting service and people at the heart makes for an unbeatable business, Jimson reckons. It has warmed the heart of city, with Toronto Star readers picking HotBlack Coffee as the best coffee shop in 2021. The café has also been the subject of conversation in media around the world. Once the word spread that this little café had taken a stance against free Wi-Fi in its space, the Tonight Show, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Taiwan’s Taipei Times, French newspaper Le Monde and numerous Canadian outlets, including Chatelaine magazine came calling. “We’re just a tiny coffee shop,” Jimson says, his voice still registering a note of astonishment at being featured three times in the prestigious New York Times. HotBlack Coffee has held true to its concept of bringing people together at its three subsequent locations at Yonge and Davisville, Bloor West and Runnymede and the latest at Yonge and Charles. “This is even more important than ever,” says Jimson. While the Yonge and Davisville location (due to pandemic restrictions) has had to convert to a window front pop up, “we’ve still managed to establish interaction with customers”. “The frustration now is how to maintain human contact. It’s tricky for us and our business model. We are definitely hurting with this latest lockdown but, COVID aside, we still believe building long term relationship makes the business more recession proof. Human interaction is the key to the future.”

Gigi Jacob, Sunu Gigi & Prodip Das Co-owners, Roti Mahal Indian Cuisine, 554 Queen St. W.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist Roti Mahal is a dream come true for friends Jacob Gigi and Prodip Das. The two met on the job at Gandhi Cuisine (the predecessor to Roti Mahal) in 2007. For five years they cooked together and dreamt of one day opening their own restaurant. Even after Das left in 2012 to work for another restaurant, their friendship and their desire to cook up their own business continued to grow. They craved the freedom to manage their own time and to cook and serve the authentic Indian food they wanted. In 2020, when Gandhi Cuisine closed after 25 years in business, the pair jumped at the chance to take over the location. Gigi is my husband, and I partnered with them to open Roti Mahal. Where Gandhi Cuisine saw obstacles due to COVID, we saw opportunities. We opened under our new name in August 2020 with a similar menu but with touches of our South Indian style cuisine. For example, we’ve added a sprinkling of pineapple to our Biriyani dishes, and we now offer pickles*…date and lemon pickle, chicken and shrimp pickle, and more. And, unlike Gandhi Cuisine, we serve up a variety of Indian sweets. * Pickle is a fundamental part of Indian cuisine, and no meal is complete without it. Achar, a pickled food that is native to the Indian subcontinent, is made from a variety of vegetables and fruits, fish or meat preserved in brine, vinegar, or edible oils along with spices like chili powder, mustard and fennel seeds. Differences in preparation and spices can lead to a wide variety of Indian pickles. A mango pickle from South India may taste different from one made in North India — the southern states prefer sesame oil and tend to produce spicier pickles, while the northern states lean towards mustard oil.

It might sound crazy to take over a restaurant during a pandemic, but we were confident that customers would keep coming once they realize that we were giving them the great Indian food that they always got at Gandhi Cuisine. Still, the transition has not been easy. We work seven days a week to keep the lights on. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve been open every single day of the year (except Christmas day). The business is stronger than we ever expected because the regular customers started coming back and while it was slow at first, people gradually got excited again about Indian roti cuisine. About Us

Gigi

For Gigi, cooking is his passion. He explains that he was not the most dedicated student and at age 20 joined his uncle’s restaurant in Kerala, south India, where he fell in love with cooking. To seriously pursue a career in the industry, he went to culinary school and obtained his certification. Following that, he moved to Muscat, the capital of Oman (a Persian Gulf country), cooking continental style cuisine for nine years before moving to Canada with his family in 2006. He landed his first Canadian job at Gandhi Cuisine. Das

Born in Bangladesh, Das was 35 years old when he came to Canada in 1992 with his wife and mother. He struggled to support his family but found his calling by working as a cook at various Indian restaurants across downtown Toronto. He has added a variety of homemade Indian snacks like pakora, samosa, Indian sweets and chutneys to the menu. Das also explains that Bangladeshi food is similar to the cuisine of North India. Sunu

Gigi and I got married in 2012 after our previous marriages ended and I moved to Canada in 2015. It was a totally arranged marriage by the family. We do not have children together, but I have a son from my first marriage who is attending university back home and will join me when he completes his engineering degree. Gigi also has a daughter Sarah who is studying environmental chemistry at the University of Toronto. Growing up, I had several hobbies…from gardening to making fancy jewellery, handicrafts and graphic design. But my heart has always been in cooking. I learned cooking secrets from my mother and mother-in-law who were great cooks. I know I can’t be the only one who is in awe of her mother’s cooking skills. I leave the cooking to Gigi and Das, however, I make Kerala style homemade products like pickles, mango chutney and sweets like Carrot Laddu and Mango Sago for the restaurant. I combine this with my part time job at a long-term care facility and managing the social media and online presence of the restaurant. I recently earned a diploma in digital marketing and business management. Roti Mahal is definitely a family business. Besides Gigi, Das and myself, our children pitch in whenever they can. Sarah, and Das’ daughter Poonam, who recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Life Science, sometimes work at the restaurant. ************

What customers are saying!!

“This is the diamond in the rough that you will want to discover. If anything, I think the dishes have improve.” “Carrying on the Ghandi tradition with their own flair. My favourite roti spot in Toronto.” “Great service, people, and food. A hard to beat combination. The variety and quality of food is spot on and the food itself is a testimony to the experience and work put into it.” “Genuinely one of the best if not the best Indian restaurants. Fresh food, polite staff and incredibly talented Chefs. If they ever close down, I might move out of Toronto.”