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Rhapsody
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Dan Eyimina likes to hang out in places that make him feel good (who doesn’t?)
He also likes to create them.
His first feel-good place, Mrs. Robinson, is a Little Italy cocktail bar that takes you back to the swinging ‘70s and OG hip hop.
His new feel-good place, Rhapsody, is an Ossington Strip cocktail bar serving inventive Nikkei-Peruvian tapas, wildly eclectic tunes and such a downpour of vibe that when you make it back out to Ossington, you’ll feel drenched in it.
Here the journey is more geographic than temporal. It begins when you enter into a cavern-like space, dim and mysterious, with stone-hued walls and lofty ceilings. Instead of stalactites hanging down from above, there’s a gigantic chandelier of crystal branches, its dazzling leaves casting light-dappled shadows over a marble bar.
Travel further and you’re suddenly surrounded by murals that immerse you in a deep emerald forest. Mossy velvet chairs and banquettes offer seating at tables topped with lamps that throw off the soft orange glow of fireflies. Amorphously-shaped mirrors on the walls and ceiling resemble giant raindrops, or perhaps minuscule lagoons – take your pick, then take a reflective pic (most people can’t resist).
Just as a walk through the woods hopefully brings you to a cooling lake, making your way through Rhapsody’s enchanted forest leads you into the aptly named “Water Room.” Mystical and a little bit magical, the rippling, metallic walls and mermaid videos offer the aesthetic equivalent of getting doused in a refreshing waterfall.
Because rhapsodizing can be a multi-sensory experience, Rhapsody is more than just visuals and vibes. It’s also sounds. A self-proclaimed musical guy, Eyimina grew up under the influence of his parents’ love of gospel and blues. Later, he studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music and learned to play sax. Not only does he believe in the transporting power of music, but he puts his beliefs into practice at Rhapsody.
Unlike Mrs. Robinson, which focuses on hip hop and roots, Rhapsody is more freewheeling. “My focus is on what I like to call good music,” says Eyimina.
In keeping with this ethos, Rhapsody’s playlists and nightly DJ sessions traffic in multiple genres. Steeped in a wide breadth of musical knowledge, guest DJs work to surprise patrons with remixes and B-sides they’ll likely never hear in other Toronto venues.
Another sense that gets a serious workout at Rhapsody is taste. When Eyimina went looking for a chef, his main criteria was to find someone with passion, who loves what they do. That chef Elias Salazar, who’s half-Peruvian and half-Palestinian, loves Peruvian cuisine with a passion, was a happy, not to mention delicious, coincidence.
Born in Peru, Salazar was raised in a food-centric family. As a boy, he often helped out his uncles, who were chefs. Arriving in Toronto in 1996, at the age of 16, he observed that Peruvian cuisine was surprisingly hard to come by. A quarter-century later, he’s puzzled that it’s still so underrepresented in the GTA, despite having gained global acclaim for its off-the-charts diversity.
In recent years, Salazar has sought to rectify this lacuna, opening celebrated pop-up, Limon Modern Peruvian Kitchen, and his own restaurant, Kay Pacha. When tapped by Eyimina to create a menu for Rhapsody, he was excited at the opportunity to bring a new, more foodie-forward concept of Peruvian cuisine to the Ossington Strip.
Correction: Peruvian cuisines.
Impressively, there are many: Criollo (Creole), Amazonian, raw (ceviches, tiraditos), Italo-Peruvian, and Chifa (Chinese-Peruvian). There’s also Nikkei (Japanese Peruvian), which in Peru is almost as widespread as traditional Peruvian cuisine with its marked indigenous influences.
Equally impressive is that Salazar dominates them all.
At Rhapsody, Salazar’s point of departure is traditional Peruvian fare into which he incorporates myriad Nikkei elements. The result is a creative, hybrid melding of influences and ingredients that you won’t find anywhere else.
“I’m trying to show guests the versatility of Peruvian cuisine, how far you can go with the ingredients that we have – 6,000 types of potatoes, so many types of peppers and corn…”
Such versatility can be tasted throughout the menu, but a good starting point is the empanadas. The Criolla is filled to bursting with finely ground sirloin, delicately spiced and radiating subtle heat. There’s also a vegetarian version that combines soft cubes of sweet Peruvian squash with hearty potatoes and bright niblets of Andean corn. A zippy house chimichurri accompanies both options.
Brussels sprouts are definitely having a moment. Salazar goes ahead and lets them by marinating them for 24 hours in Japanese shoyu and uni paste. A day later, they’re cooked sous-vide for an hour, then flash-fried so that the outer leaves possess the best-kind-of-French-fry crispness. Showered with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and toasted sesame, the sprouts are accompanied by an umami-rich miso aioli, but are perilously addictive on their own.
One of the more unusual hot tapas on the menu, Pulpo Parillero features the unlikely pairing of octopus and pork belly. After soaking in a classic anticucho marinade of garlic, onion and cilantro, the octopus is char-grilled to succulence, then set afloat amid a rich stew of sun-dried Peruvian potatoes and pork belly. Dialing the flavours up a notch are botijas, Peruvian heirloom olives that Salazar adds in both dehydrated and emulsified forms. The result is one of those wonderful dishes that on paper sounds so wrong, on the plate looks so intriguing, and in your mouth feels so right. Or as Salazar puts it: “This pairing definitely slaps.”
With ceviche you think you’re on familiar ground. But all bets are off when a sleek black bowl emerges from the kitchen, spouting plumes of smoke dramatic enough to make you momentarily think your ceviche is about to blast off to another galaxy.
“I wanted to be fancy,” laughs Salazar. “And I wanted to play with smoke. So I decided to serve the ceviche on dry ice and do a combustion while also maintaining its cold freshness. Deep down, I was also thinking ‘Dude, really?’.”
Once the smoke clears, you’re confronted with another vision: tender morsels of Portuguese tiger shrimp, Moroccan octopus, sweet yam and Andean corn, happily bathing in an all-too-slurpable pool of leche de tigre (tiger’s milk).
As Salazar explains, leche de tigre is one of the distinctive features of Peruvian ceviche. Unlike its Mexican counterpart, for example, in which fish and/or seafood marinate directly in lime juice, leaving it with a sharp, citrusy zing – and a risk of curdling – in Peru, ingredients are steeped in a marinade made from pureed fish and/or seafood, cilantro, fish stock, lime juice, celery and rocoto peppers. “Blend, strain and you’re left with this beautiful milk that’s not too aggressive.”
Rhapsody’s Ceviche Misto is indeed suave, the citrus dialed down just enough to savour the other flavours playing on your tongue. Salazar is particularly proud of the unorthodox vegan version, which swaps out seafood for wild shiitake mushrooms marinated in artichoke leche, then adds pureed avocado, cenoki tempura and chulpe corn.
“There’s so much we can do with Peruvian cuisine; there are just so many ingredients,” declares Salazar, recounting how his suppliers constantly tempt him with new products to experiment with. For this reason, don’t expect Rhapsody’s menu to stay static. As he confesses, “I’m a rotating menu kind of of guy.”
One thing that hopefully won’t get rotated out is the Lucuma Sando. One of two crazily inventive desserts, this Peruvian riff on an ice-cream sandwich features lucuma, a South American superfruit with a rich, yammy texture and a hard-to-pin-down taste that manages to simultaneously conjure citrus and caramel. Churned into ice cream, it’s sandwiched between a pair of Biscoff alfajor cookies, then sprinkled generously with toasted coconut, Peruvian chocolate shavings and flecks of gold to up the flavour, texture and beauty quotients.
In tune with Salazar’s menu is the cocktail menu created by bar manager Joe Beiglee. Beiglee, who followed Eyimina from Mrs. Robinson, has created 10 original drinks, most of them playful twists on classics, all of them christened after favourite songs.
Particularly on theme are several drinks that incorporate Peruvian pisco. Easy Rider, for example, plays on a traditional Pisco Sour, adding an unexpected earthy yet sweetly compelling shot of house-made fig syrup to the standard pisco, lemon juice and egg white foam.
Another successful riff is Family Ties. An olive-oil fat-washed pisco Negroni, this bracing mixture of pisco, Campari and sweet vermouth is softened by the rich, silky finish supplied by otherwise imperceptible olive oil.
Beyond pisco, Beiglee has made an effort to embrace all the major spirits. He does a powerfully good job of inclusiveness with Snow Beach, a subversive version of Long Island Iced Tea in which all the usual summery ingredients are swapped out for a quartet of bitter “wintery” amaros and a bold base of rye. Replacing Coke, Brio stokes the bitter vibe while grapefruit and lime juice add balancing notes of citrus.
In addition to the seasonally rotating cocktails, there are mocktails and gorgeously purple chicha morada, a Peruvian sweet corn-based drink. Beers include bottled basics and crafts (Estrella, Burdock) on tap. In terms of wines, a narrow, but straightforward list covers all the bases. There’s also a reserve list if you’re in the mood to celebrate… or merely to rhapsodize.
Which brings us back to the name – and Rhapsody’s raison d’etre. “We hope that guests who come here will feel rhapsodical,” stresses Eyimina, before questioning himself. “Is ‘rhapsodical’ a word?”
Turns out it is (“a less common variant of rhapsodic,” according to Merriam-Webster).
But even if it weren’t, it would definitely describe the lingering sensation that accompanies you back out onto Ossington, a few rhapsodical songs, plates, glasses, and maybe even hours later.
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