There are 40 litres of piri-piri sauce in the walk-in at Frango's, but Arjang Sadighi didn't make a drop of it; he’ll have to work through the batch before he can swap in his own. It came from Bocado Grill, the family-run Portuguese spot on the South Shore where Soufian Mamlouk ate often enough that the idea for this place took shape between visits. They handed over the recipe, the technique, and the sauce as advisors.
Frango's occupies the Little Burgundy room that once housed HENI, which is where Sadighi's story starts. He's Persian, close to 15 years into cooking, and HENI's SWANA influences pulled him in the door two years ago when Julien Robillard still ran the kitchen. He worked his way to sous, then took the kitchen outright before the restaurant went quiet. HENI did well by the metrics that get restaurants noticed: Canada's Best 100, Air Canada's Best New Restaurants, general media hype and attention.
Mamlouk is careful about how he describes what happened. "HENI is on hiatus, is what I would say. I wouldn't say that it's closed for good," he says. "We did great things, but we were missing in the areas that a restaurant shouldn't miss, like in vibe and atmosphere and approachability."
So approachability got engineered into the floor plan. Where HENI kept a long empty stretch between the door and the dining room, Frango's pulls its 35 seats up to the entrance.
“We know which came first”
"Portuguese chicken, you know what it is in three seconds," Mamlouk says. "I want you to see it when you walk by." Hip-hop is loudly and deliberately played, and it runs through the décor as much as the speakers.
As for the chicken itself: Birds arrive split in half, skin poked so the marinade seeps in, then sit in paprika and a spice mix Sadighi isn't sharing, six hours minimum and preferably overnight. They spend 25 to 30 minutes on a gas rotisserie, never quite to the finish, then hold at 70 degrees Celsius in a hot box so nothing dries out waiting on an order. Every bird finishes over charcoal, basted with a reduction built from the fat and bones of the day's chickens, cut with butter and miso. Piri-piri goes on last.
Finish “HENI Had the Accolades. Frango’s Wants the Crowd.”
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